For half a century after its introduction in Europe, printmaking remained the province of a specially trained group of professionals. What changed this situation was the invention of etching, which allowed for print designs to be drawn directly onto a plate so that any competent draftsman could try his hand at it. Many artists did, and as a result, we now have a wide-ranging corpus of major Renaissance and Baroque graphics made by artists who, though famous in other fields, were novices in the print medium.

Featuring essays by Michael Cole, Larry Silver, Susan Dackerman, Graham...