Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec remains one of the most popular French painters of the late 19th century, largely because his art has transmitted such a compelling image of fin-de-siècle Paris, particularly its entertainment district of Montmartre. Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of performers, clientele, or the anonymous figures who inhabited that nocturnal world permanently linked his name with the district’s dance halls, bars, cabarets, cafés-concerts, and bordellos. The catalog explores the work of Toulouse-Lautrec along with that of his contemporaries and the ways in which they depicted the decadent life of Montmartre in the 1890s. The more than 250 works of art included present a lively picture of the ambivalent glamour and the licit and illicit pleasures of Montmartre through use of many media, including paintings, drawings, posters, prints, and sculptures.

This highly anticipated and beautifully illustrated book examines the evolution of early printmaking in late medieval Europe. Through their means of production and the evidence of their utility, prints are explored in a broad social and economic context. Key topics include the complex problem of reconstructing the beginnings of the European woodcut; the practice of copying and dissemination of models endemic to the medium; and the varied functions of the print from the spiritual to the secular. A team of expert authors examines the many ways in which fifteenth-century woodcuts and metalcuts reflect the nature of piety and visual experience. Replicated images helped to structure private religious practice, transmit beliefs, disseminate knowledge about material facts, and graph abstract ideas. Mass-produced pictures made it feasible for people of all stations to possess them, thereby initiating a change in the role of images that eventually helped alter the definition of art itself.
The Origins of European Printmaking is an essential book for art historians, students, and collectors, as well as the general reader with an interest in medieval history and culture.