Metalcut

Metalcut was a relief printmaking technique, belonging to the category of old master prints. It was almost entirely restricted to the period from about 1450 to 1540, and mostly to the region around the Rhine in Northern Europe, the Low Countries, Germany, France and Switzerland; the technique perhaps originated in the area around Cologne.

There were two different techniques for making metalcut prints, with very different results.

The first technique is essentially that of woodcut but using a thin metal plate rather than a wooden block. The areas not to print are cut away, or hammered back with punches. These prints look very much like normal woodcuts of the period, and it can sometimes be hard for experts to tell them apart.[1] The subject matter is almost entirely religious in the early period, which mostly consists of single prints for display or collecting, and mostly ornamental in the 16th century revival, which mostly consists of illustrations and borders for books. There was a late flowering of the original method around 1500 in France, with a series of lavish Books of Hours. In the sixteenth century the technique continued to be used for elaborate borders and initial letters in books, [2] notably by Jacob Faber, who often used designs by Hans Holbein the Younger.

The second technique, was introduced in the second half of the 15th century and worked from black to white, meaning that the print showed white lines on a black background, rather than the other way round as in the first technique. Again prints were nearly always on religious subjects. Usually the main lines of the figures and landscape were done in engraving. Then using metalwork punches, the rest of the image is composed of repeated use of the same pattern of punch in a particular area. These might be dots, circles, lozenges, stars, letters making text inscriptions, or more complicated shapes for the borders. Usually very little space is left undecorated; and this technique is easy to recognise.[3] These prints ceased to be produced about 1500. The plates themselves may have been treated as works of art in plaque form, with printed impressions a useful by-product; in some cases inscriptions print in reverse, though others do not. Some copper plates survive, often with nail-holes at the corners.

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