[Sca-cooks] Ebay listing of possible interest

[Terry Decker]

It may be a variation in the woodcut.  Remember that there were at least
four different editions of Scappi by three different printers.  That means
at least three different sets of reverse woodcuts had to be made to produce
the illustrations for each edition.  Also, the woodcuts degrade with the
number of impressions made.  Later images from the same run might be blurry
and lack some of the fine details.

It is possible that a soft metal like copper was molded over the woodcut to
extend its life, or that a lithograph was used to produce the final print
(although stone carving is general more difficult than wood carving).
Engraved metal plates are a later developement.

Bear


>I don't know whether it's just an artifact of a low-resolution scan, but
>the copies I have (from a cookbook by the Met. Mus. of Art) have much more
>fine detail & cross-hatching than are showing up on these pictures. For
>ex., the wall beside the fellow with the churn is dark with cross-hatching
>in my copy, and there is a dark cross-hatched shadow under the table, yet
>there are no such lines in this picture.
>
>Cindy