History is Cool

Breaking of the Fifth and Sixth Seals, Albrecht Dürer, 15th-16th century, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gray Collection of Engravings Fund

Piece LXXX, Anonymous, 1799, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Philip Hofer

Sheet from Book of Instructions for Drawing Landscapes, Unidentified Artist, 18th century, Harvard Art Museums: Drawings

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Anonymous Loan in honor of Carlo James Size: 13.8 x 19.1 cm (5 7/16 x 7 ½ in.) Medium: Black ink, black and gray wash on cream antique laid paper

Why the Pifflers Lost their Return Match, George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier, 1865, Cleveland Museum of Art: Prints

Medium: wood engraving

Thanksgiving Day in the Army - After Dinner: The Wish-Bone, Winslow Homer, 1864, Cleveland Museum of Art: Prints

Medium: wood engraving

Untitled (Girl Seated in Chair, Holding Straw Hat), Unidentified, 1850s, Smithsonian: American Art Museum

Size: 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ in. (8.3 x 10.8 cm) Medium: daguerreotype

The Cliff, Bay of Saint Malo, Félix Hilaire Buhot, 1886-1890, Cleveland Museum of Art: Prints

Size: Sheet: 40.1 x 50.8 cm (15 13/16 x 20 in.); Platemark: 30.1 x 40.1 cm (11 7/8 x 15 13/16 in.) Medium: etching, drypoint, aquatint and roulette

Playing Card: King of Coins, Unidentified Artist, 19th century, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Edward W. Forbes Medium: Engraving with stenciled opaque watercolor on card

The Gotha Missal: Fol. 39r, Text, Master of the Boqueteaux, c. 1375, Cleveland Museum of Art: Medieval Art

This elegant Latin manuscript is known today as the Gotha Missal after its eighteenth-century owners, the German Dukes of Gotha. The volume was originally copied and illuminated in Paris around 1375—a commission of the Valois king, Charles V “the Wise” (reigned 1364–80), one of the great bibliophiles of the 1400s and brother of Dukes Philip the Bold of Burgundy and Jean de Berry. Manuscript missals were not intended for the lay user; the present volume was used by the king’s private chaplain and was probably housed in Charles’s private chapel, possibly in his principle residence, the Palace of the Louvre (demolished in the 1500s). The main decorative body of the missal consists of two full-page miniatures comprising the Canon of the Mass and 23 small miniatures. The style and high quality of the decoration points to its inclusion within a select group of manuscripts accepted today by the hand of Jean Bondol. Bondol was active at the court of Charles V from 1368 until 1381, where he was head of the court workshop and also served as the king’s valet de chambre. The blind-tooled leather binding dates to the 1400s. Size: Codex: 27.1 x 19.5 cm (10 11/16 x 7 11/16 in.) Medium: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum; blind-tooled leather binding

Tourelle en Fontaine Rue d'Ecole de Medicines demolies en 1877, Alfred Alexandre Delauney, Cleveland Museum of Art: Prints

Medium: etching

Street of Stairs, Siena, Joseph Pennell, 1883, Minneapolis Institute of Art: Prints and Drawings

Size: 11 13/16 x 5 in. (30 x 12.7 cm) (plate) 17 ¼ x 13 5/16 in. (43.82 x 33.81 cm) (sheet) Medium: Etching

Letter E, Anonymous Spain 1599, 16th century, Harvard Art Museums: Prints

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Philip Hofer

Suite of Vases: Plate 30, Jacques François Saly, 1746, Cleveland Museum of Art: Prints

Designing ornamental vases or urns was particularly popular during the mid-18th century since the only limit to the possibilities was the imagination of the artist. Saly, a sculptor by training, was a student at the French Academy in Rome from 1740 to 1746, at which time he published a set of 30 etchings. Saly began with basic antique vase forms but deviated from classical ornament to use a rich variety of fantastic creatures for embellishment. Medium: etching

A fine German field armour, made for a boy circa 1800

Ancient Egyptian Painter's Palette

This painter's palette was carved from a single piece of ivory. Six oval wells contain cakes of pigments including blue, green, brown (?), yellow, red, and black. The oval cartouche at one end encircles the throne name of Amenhotep III, Nebmaatre, and the epithet "beloved of Re."

Courtyard with Painters, late 1860s, Cleveland Museum of Art: Photography

This photographer inventively expanded the medium to create a rare example of both early genre (everyday life) photography and documentation of artists at work. The collodion negative captured a wealth of detail. The French village courtyard bustles with activity-the artist in the foreground hugs a squirming child and chats with his wife; a group of peasant women in the background heave huge bundles of laundry about in carts and baskets; and an innkeeper poses proudly for the camera outside his ivy-covered establishment. The diagonals of the sloping roofs and the textures of tiles, wood, and stone enhance the composition’s visual interest. A luminous glow, absorbed by open canvas umbrellas, pervades the center of the scene. Size: Image: 28.4 x 38.6 cm (11 3/16 x 15 3/16 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.) Medium: albumen print from wet collodion negative