An Overview of the History of Matting

1498  Albrecht Durer, The Martyrdom of St. John, Woodcut,  from The Apocalypse,  published in  Nuremberg This woodcut was printed with text and published in a folio.  The first pages printed from movable, metal type were produced by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz circa 1440. Even before 1500, printing had spread to 60 German towns, and German printers would take the technology to England, France, Holland, Italy and Spain. While the Renaissance was in full bloom in Italy ( beginning in Florence circa 1420, Venice & Padue 1450 ), the Late Gothic style predominated in the German Empire ( including Austria, Hungary, The Netherlands, Luxembourg & Burgundy ) from 1420 to 1500.  Imposing civic architecture flourished in the prosperous commercial cities.

This matting treatment imitates the old practice of removing printed images from folios or books, trimming off the marginal paper and “tipping” them onto sheets of paper with glue or paste.  These  secondary sheets were often decorated with ink lines around the image.  The frame replicates, in smaller scale, original frames on Durer paintings of this period.

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