by Xinyue Gao

Kristin L. Huffman, Lecturing Fellow of Art History, has been awarded a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. An Aisla Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow, she will be in residence at the Center this spring to advance her book and companion visual database about the graphic inventions of Jacopo de’ Barbari. This enigmatic artist’s woodcuts and engravings inspired high-profile practitioners and theorists, such as Albrecht Dürer, and influential collectors, such as the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and his daughter, Margaret of Austria, in northern Europe. Huffman’s research has begun to unravel understandings about this undervalued, yet innovative Italian Renaissance artist and his transcultural exchanges via printed imagery. 

This CASVA supported project extends Huffman’s scholarship on the View of Venice, work that included an exhibition at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art in 2017, foundational material for a forthcoming installation at the Correr Museum in Venice, Italy and an edited volume, A View of Venice: Portrait of a Renaissance City (Duke University Press, 2023). Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice, a monumental woodcut published in 1500, was unprecedented for its complexities of production, monumental dimensions (more than 1.35 by 2.75 meters), and its groundbreaking scientific and artistic invention (the high-resolution image is available here for study: 10.7924/G8MK69TH).  Huffman’s project and its methodology, a dynamic interplay between traditional art historical methods and the latest visualization technologies, offer a new approach to studying works of art, especially printed multiples and the matrices (wooden blocks or copper plates) used to publish them.