PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The La Salle University Art Museum presents “Printmakers of the Baroque: Explorations of Space and Light in 17th-Century Prints” on view until February 28, 2014.

This exhibition presents prints from the permanent collection of the La Salle University Art Museum by 17th-century European printmakers who employed the print media to serve a range of functions. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa who were known for their paintings but who used printmaking as an alternative means of artistic expression. There are prints by Hendrick Goudt and Jérôme David, who reproduced other artists’ paintings. The exhibition also highlights works by dedicated printmakers, such as Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella. Among these are works by members of printmaking families, such as the Perelle father and sons, and Jan Van de Velde II.

The selected works demonstrate two major themes often associated with Baroque art: space and light. The themes are interpreted broadly. Various pictorial illusions that entice the viewer to participate emotionally in the image have long been recognized as characteristics of the Baroque. The exhibition reveals some of the spatial and illumination artifices. Seventeenth-century printmakers also showed concern for changing social and cultural spaces, as seen in the increased number of representations of those marginal to elite society (beggars, off-duty soldiers, foreigners). The space of the imagination attracted attention in the Baroque period as well, and the exhibition includes images of fairy tales, emblems, and the theater.

In tandem with the main exhibition, additional 17th-century European prints are on view in the 20th Century Hallway. Artists include Orazio Borgianni, Pietro Aquila, Pierre Lepautre, Claude Mellan and Jusepe de Ribera.