In Gallery 124, adjacent to the newly restored Jacopo Tintoretto paintings, we’ve displayed prints from the museum’s collection by artists commissioned to reproduce famous Venetian paintings. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, paintings did not travel to museum exhibitions as they do today, so people had to go to Venice to see Tintoretto’s monumental works. Prints served as a way to disseminate images of paintings to those who could not travel to Italy. They also served as souvenirs for tourists to take home from their European tours.

On display are prints by artists from three different countries working with three different printing techniques: metal-plate engraving, wood engraving, and chiaroscuro woodcut. Theses printmakers pushed their chosen media to the limit to recreate images originally depicted in oil paint on canvas. 

Artist Guiseppe Camerata II (1718–1803) was born in Italy but as an adult lived and worked in Dresden, Germany. He translated paintings by notable Italian artists into etchings. La Probatica Piscina (Christ at the Pool of Bethesda) made a stop in the paper lab where I reduced surface grime that had accumulated over more than 200 years. The dark eraser crumbs in the photo show how much grime was removed before we put the print in a new mat and framed it for display.

These prints will be on view in Gallery 124 as part of the exhibition Tintoretto’s Genesis until August 31, 2025. To enhance your Italian experience, be sure to visit Gallery 213 to see a group of Venetian prints from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This special feature—titled La Serenissima or The Most Serene—is on display now until July 31.