From the discovery of canvas to modern art prints
Canvas art prints are a relatively new development in the history of painting. During the Middle Ages murals and painting were predominantly done on heavy substrates such as wood. Renaissance artists in the 15th Century discovered that the cloth was a new, easy and inexpensive surface to be painted on. Now even large scale images could be produced and transported easily in the palaces of the principal. The flower of Florentine’s cloth making industry may have also contributed to the discovery of the textured fabric, as a new surface to be painted on. This included the famous Italian Renaissance paint Sandro Botticelli.
The benefits of painting on cloth quickly ensured their dissemination, so that from the 16th Century it was considered to be a popular material to carry an image. Up to the 19th Century hemp was often used with its robust but course fibres. The fabric was – as is today – stretched over a wooden frame o wood. Later more and more fine textured fabrics such as linen and cotton or mixtures of various substances were added. Hemp has been partially brought back in modern painting today, and with it canvas images come with a course texture. Canvas prints are particularly suitable for painting techniques that involve painting with oil paints and acrylics and therefore the prevailing tempera painting in from the 15th Century was largely these diluted.
With the onset of industrialisation there was a continued search for a method for the reproduction of works of art. From the 18th Century this resulted in the lithographic printing technique developed originally by the Mulhouse German-French lithographer Godefroy Engelmann, a method with which it was possible to print and colour illustrations to a very high quality. In 1837 the patented Chromolithographer became the forerunner for today’s method with which art prints are produced. Although the reproductions produced by the oil Chromolithographer had a similar image quality, they were so expensive that they were not affordable enough for anyone to buy them. Even the light printing, which replaced the Chromolithographer as a process was too expensive to keep for the long term.
Modern art prints
Today high-quality arts prints, mostly in offset or digital printing are made using special machinery. Therefore many more colours than usual are frequently used – especially the difficult to reproduce colours such as purple, gold and silver, in order to come as close as possible to the original. These can be printed onto different substrates. The tension on previous canvases remains popular, which is usually sealed with a protective coating, so that the images are fade resistant.
