In writing about the Pembroke album in the 1970s, Alan M. Fern, then director of the Library of Congress Research Department, and Karen Beall, then curator of fine prints in the Prints & Photographs Division, noted that some of the prints in the album were scarce and important, and that the contents offer insights on the chiaroscuro process. The album contains several proofs of "key blocks" showing the design in black before colored tint blocks added color to the prints. Several versions of the same subject, reversed copies, and other variations, are also included.

Fern and Beall also highlighted the artists to whom the prints have been attributed. Many of the prints reproduce drawings or other works of art. Parmigianino is associated with more than a third of the prints, followed by Guido Reni, Beccafumi, and Raphael among the original artists. Ugo da Carpi is the printmaker most represented. More than twenty of his chiaroscuros appear in the album. Fern and Beal remarked that Ugo da Carpi was the "earliest and possibly most accomplished of the artists represented in the Library's album." While da Carpi's claim that he invented the process is not strictly accurate, "he had in fact used the technique in a different fashion than his German predecessors." He and "the Italian chiaroscurists who followed him relied far less on a key block to define the composition of their prints. Instead, they built their pictures out of three or four successive tone blocks, achieving an effect closer to the subtle tonal modulation of a wash drawing than was the practice in Germany." ¹  Bartolomeo Coriolano produced sixteen prints, primarily reproducing works by Guido Reni.

A fuller list of the artists who made the prints or to whom attributions have been made includes:

• Andrea Andreani
• Domenico Beccafumi
• Ugo da Carpi
• Girolamo Bolsi
• Caravaggio
• Bartolomeo Coriolano
• Alessandro Gandini
• Jacopo Ligozzi
• Andrea Michieli
• Parmigianino
• Giovanni Francesco Penni
• Raffaellino
• Raphael
• Guido Reni
• Giulio Romano
• Antonio da Trento
• Giuseppe Niccolò Vicentino

The prints primarily depict biblical and mythological scenes. However, a stage setting of L'Ortensio designed for a ducal wedding festivity in 1560 also appears in the collection. Among the art works from which the prints were adapted are three prints after Raphael's designs for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel.

Notes

1. Alan Fern and Karen Beall, "The 'Pembroke' Album of Chiaroscuros," (Link available through Internet Archive) in Graphic Sampler compiled by Renata V. Shaw (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1979): 13, 20-21. Back to text