Prints for the People: How the Printing Press Revolutionized Renaissance Art and Thought

Dr. Laurinda Dixon

The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century began an unprecedented technological revolution in the Western world. For the first time, books and works of art could be mass-produced, putting literacy and art ownership within the grasp of all people, not just wealthy elites. The unrestricted availability of information transcended national borders, threatening the power of political and religious authorities and accelerating the emergence of a middle class. European vernacular languages were finally standardized and written down, replacing Latin as the universal lingua franca.
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By the year 1480, printing presses were active in 110 places all over Europe, and by 1500 they had produced more than 20 million copies. Political propaganda was easily and broadly disseminated, and individual books could assume the status of best-sellers. Among the reading populace, which now included nearly everybody, it became necessary to learn punctuation, spelling, and much to the dismay of students today, to justify one’s ideas by citing existing printed sources.
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Printed “mass media” greatly changed the ways in which viewers perceived art. Suddenly, works of art were widely and cheaply accessible, both in their own right and as a means of enhancing books via illustrations. The earliest print artists were trained in other fields, usually goldsmithing, and their artistic technique can seem crude and awkward in retrospect. But several visionary pioneers and entrepreneurs stand out for their innovative skill in translating the old painterly elements -light, shadow, and line - into new paradigms of sight and perception. The printing press became so synonymous with this new enterprise that it lent its name to an entire branch of mass media, which we now call “the press.”