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Temperamental!: Prints in the Collection of Bryn Mawr College

Imagine Temperaments

In the early modern period, the beginnings of empirical science competed with Platonic distrust of the senses. Could the senses be trusted? Where do the things seen in the mind’s eye come from? Thomas Hobbes considered imagination (phantasia) to be a particularly dangerous faculty of the mind for its ability to cloud reason and deceive the sense of sight (Leviathan, 1651). He feared an imagination ungoverned by reason, which plunged the mind into darkness and left it vulnerable to witchcraft and the Devil. As both Robert Burton (The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621) and Timothy Bright (Treatise of Melancholy, 1586) earlier cautioned, the melancholic temperament was especially vulnerable to the “monstrous fictions” of imagination.

Even earlier, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Cennino Cennini (c.1360–before 1427) recognized the generative potential of the imagination’s chimerical images. “Painting...,” Cennini wrote, "calls for imagination ... in order to discover things not seen, hiding themselves under the shadow of natural objects, and to fix them with the hand, presenting to plain sight what does not really exist.” The works in this section represent the outcomes of artistic imagination, yet they require the viewer to complete their interpretation. These prints beckon the mind to “discover things not seen”: to experience beauty, sadness, and rage; to interpret meaning; to finish an image for the artist, and even to envision our own.

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Francisco Amighetti (Costa Rican, 1907-1998). El niño y la nube (The Boy and the Cloud) (1969). Color lithograph of woodblock print, edition 7/12, signed in pencil below image, 2012.27.444.
Amze Emmons (American, b. 1974), Levity (2018). 10-color screenprint with laser cut elements on Coventry rag paper; edition 71/200; signed in pencil on verso; Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine, Class of 1946, and Howard H. Levine; 2018.37.1.
Hendrick Goltzius (Netherlands, 1558-1617), The Adoration of Shepherds (c. 1599), published by Jacob Matham, after 1617. Engraving and drypoint; state ii/iv; New Hollstein 14; Gift of Richard C. Bull, 2012.22.1. Goltzius, known for his highly finished Mannerist prints, is unlikely to have left this engraving incomplete intentionally. Yet the print is enhanced by what is left to the imagination. Joseph, Mary, and two shepherds enclose the luminous space where the cradled baby Jesus would have emerged. The wonder in their expressions perhaps mirrors the viewer's own joyful experience of looking at the print. The candle in Joseph’s outstretched hand seems to beckon the viewer forward, inviting us not only to bear witness to the event, but to generate in our mind the missing child—the true subject of the print.
Charles Amand-Durand (French, 1831-1905), after Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669); Jan Cornelis Sylvius (1882, after 1646 print). Heliogravure from newly engraved copper plate, X.332. This posthumous portrait of the Dutch preacher Jan Cornelius Sylvius (1564-1638) employs a trompe l’oeil (or trick the eye) effect in the subject's right hand, which appears to penetrate the picture plane. His oratory gesture beckons to the viewer—perhaps with a choleric exhortation or sanguine moral guidance. The Latin inscription encircling and below the subject describes his exemplary Christian life. This eulogy is not merely a moralizing device, but perhaps another gesture inviting the viewer’s emulation of the deceased figure.
Will Barnet (American, 1911-2012), Gramercy Park (2012). 5-color photo-lithograph on Hanamühle Copperplate Bright White paper; edition 176/200; signed in pencil; Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine, Class of 1946, and Howard H. Levine; 2012.27.643.
Goltzius_Amand-Durand
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828), The Sleep of Reason (1797). Aquatint and etching; from 4th (1878), 6th (1890-1900), or 9th (1908-12) edition; on loan from Mitchell Cohn (HC, Class of 1980).
Goya
Mary Bauermeister (German, b. 1934), Rainbow (1973). Lithograph, edition 52/250, signed in pencil, Gift of Argosy Partners and Bond Street Partners, 1980.5.
Faith Ringgold (American, b. around 1930), Here Comes Moses (2014). Serigraph; edition 93/200; signed in pencil; Gift of Jacqueline Koldin Levine, Class of 1946, and Howard H. Levine; 2014.9.1.