Change of Use, Change of Public, Change of Meaning: Printed Images Travelling Through Europe

Abstract

Alberto Milano presents a synthetic overview of printed ephemera modified across Europe over four centuries. Drawing attention to geographical, chronological, and social parameters, he concentrates on a few typical processes: the transformation of high-value artistic images into everyday artefacts, mainly fans, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; the French conversion of Italian seventeenth-century prints with a political meaning into items with a moral or ethical dimension; the Russian destiny of an English print about a sensational case; the application of romantic and satirical subjects to the decoration of small objects. Milano’s well-informed view of print propagation through a European common market from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries strongly questions nationalistic approaches common to the first decades of the twentieth century.

Alberto Milano passed away on 2 May 2016 shortly after submitting this chapter and discussing its main points and structure with the editor. A few further bibliographical notes, image references, and some translations and comments on the ambiguities of language have been further added to his text with a view to clarity.