The Other Side of the Matrix. The Printing Plate as a Painting Support Based on Examples from the Collection of the National Museum in Warsaw

Abstract

The article discusses printing plates repurposed as painting supports based on two examples from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw. The first copper plate, engraved by the Monogrammist T.V.B. in the mid-sixteenth century, shows the coat of arms of the Petershausen Abbey in Konstanz. The second was originally engraved in France by the Lviv-born Polish painter and engraver Jan Ziarnko. Initially used to produce heraldic prints with the coat of arms of Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, after later re-working, it shows the Pilawa coat of arms and a Latin inscription. This plate is the second surviving printing plate attributable to the celebrated Polish engraver. The reverse sides of both plates feature painted religious scenes – the Madonna and Child and the Lamentation of Christ by Angels. What the two plates have in common, therefore, is not only a shared subject (as heraldic engravings) but a similar fate in their reuse as substrates for religious scenes, perhaps used in private devotion on account of their small size. Prints made from the plates may have served as bookplates, the use of which became widespread among the clergy and aristocracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.