20 August – 31 October 2010
Gallery 22


In a rare opportunity, some of the masterpieces of Italian printmaking go on display in the exhibition A beautiful line. The exhibition comprises around 140 Italian prints from the mid fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries drawn from the rich collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Highlights include Andrea Mantegna’s Renaissance masterpiece The Entombment, woodcuts by Titian and his contemporaries, and G.B. Piranesi’s dark and evocative prints of imaginary prisons from the eighteenth century. Major printmakers are examined and the virtuosity and diversity of printmaking during this period is explored through religious, mythological, and architectural subjects.

Exhibition list of works



^{detail: Paolo Farinati, Italy, 1524-1606, Venus and Cupid, 1566, Verona, Italy, etching, engraving on paper, 26.8 x 25.7 cm (plate & sheet). Bequest of David Murray 1908. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.}