Calendar for the Year 1563
Unidentified artist, Swiss, 16th century
(Swiss, 16th century)
Christoph Froschauer
(Swiss, died in 1564)
1562
Medium/TechniqueLetterpress with woodcut, printed in two colors
DimensionsSheet: 43.4 × 28.4 cm (17 1/16 × 11 3/16 in.)
Credit LineKatherine E. Bullard Fund
Accession number2018.3158
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPrints
Collections
One of the great ironies in the history of printing is that the most common prints of centuries past are often the rarest today. After all, who keeps an advertising flier or last year's calendar? The sheet is the upper half of a calendar for 1563, printed in Zurich. It provides all sorts of useful information on saints' days and astrological signs, weather and the movement of the planets, carefully arranged underneath a truly bizarre scene of domestic upheaval --- all neatly and carefully printed in not one but two colors. The work's very epehermerality makes it all the more striking to see the care that the printer and publisher have lavished on the printing of so "minor" a work. That fact alone speaks volumes about the sophisticated printing culture of 16th-century Zurich.
Provenance2018, sold by an unidentified French book dealer to James Bergquist (dealer), Newton, MA; 2018, sold by Bergquist to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 12, 2018)Unidentified artist, Swiss, 16th century
1580
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
mid 16th–late 16th century
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
mid 16th century
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
mid 16th century
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
mid 16th century
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
Unidentified artist, Italian, 16th century
mid 16th century