“Jean Michel [Basquiat] came by. Worked all afternoon. Rupert [Jasen Smith] came to collate the new prints. The Details...Like details of the Botticelli ‘Venus’. But people are loving these best. Like they loved the James Dean cover”
In 1984 Andy Warhol began a series of works on canvas and editioned prints based on iconic paintings from the Italian Renaissance. These images included reinterpretations of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation and Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
Published in small limited editions, the Details of Renaissance Paintings prints were each created in four distinctive colourways. In these screenprints Warhol draws on his signature neon colour palette, transforming his Renaissance source images into distinctly contemporary artworks.
The Details series offers a unique insight into Warhol’s oeuvre at a time when the artist’s late career is receiving a critical reappraisal.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1485-6, Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Andy Warhol, The Birth of Venus, 1984
Leonardo da Vinci, Annunciation, c. 1472-6, Uffizi Gallery, Florence (detail)
Andy Warhol, The Annunciation, 1984
Paolo Uccello, St. George and the Dragon, c. 1470, National Gallery, London
Andy Warhol, St. George & the Dragon, 1984
Warhol and the Renaissance
Warhol’s fascination with Renaissance art can be traced back to his encounters with da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in 1963, when it was travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His sketching of da Vinci’s masterpiece resulted in a series of works featuring the Mona Lisa.
In 1986 Warhol created his final masterpiece, a series of works commissioned by Egyptian born Greek art dealer Alexander Iolas based around Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. As Peter Kattenberg has written, Warhol’s engagement with Renaissance art in this, the last chapter of his career, show the artist’s interest not only in art history but also the legacy of his high pop art: ‘he assimilated High Art and Pop Art…reproducing both reproductions of Leonardo’s icon and also his own Pop Art of the 60s’ (Andy Warhol, Priest, Leiden, 2001, p. 47).
The Details series represents a seminal part of the artist’s oeuvre and enriches our understanding of the artist’s vision. For Roberta Bernstein the series ‘shows his willingness to raid the most sacred bastions of art history for images which suggest a gesture of homage to the past, and at the same time, through their Pop colour and poster-like style, promote a position of iconoclastic irreverence’ (‘Warhol as Printmaker’, in F. Feldman & J. Schellmann, Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1985, p. 20).
Warhol and the Silkscreen Process
Andy Warhol first adopted the silkscreen process in 1962 with his renowned Campbell Soup Can editions before setting up his print publishing company Factory Editions in 1967. As Warhol described the printing process: ‘With silkscreening you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It all sounds so simple – quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it’. With the Details of Renaissance Paintings the printing was managed by Rupert Jasen Smith, Warhol’s master-printmaker from 1974 until the artist’s death in 1987.
Far from mere reproduction, each impression from a silkscreen depends on how closely the artist follows a guide, often resulting in colour overlapping line to striking effect. With the Details of Renaissance Paintings Warhol’s use of silkscreen printing is particularly rich with meaning, combining some of the most celebrated images of High Renaissance art with a modern mechanical process.
“Warhol’s technical contribution to the fine arts lies in his legitimisation of the commercial silkscreen, a process which contributed an authentic ‘newness’ to the history of picture making”
