Dayton C. Miller Musical Iconography Collection
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About the Bibliographic Records
Here is a brief explanation of some of the fields in a bibliographic record which relate to a print in the Miller collection. The Artist refers to the actual engraver, etcher, or lithographer who created the print. Similarly, Artist dates, Artist role (engraver, etcher, illustrator, caricaturist, goldsmith, lithographer, etc.), and Artist nationality all refer to the artist who actually created the print. The Title is that inscribed on a print. If the Title is unknown, it is placed in brackets; it may have been assigned based on the subject depicted in the image or it is based on evidence discovered through research. The fields Date created and Century refer to the year or the century in which the print was created. Medium refers to the technique used by the printmaker in the actual print - woodcut, engraving, etching, lithograph, mezzotint, etc. Instrument refers to musical instruments represented in the print. Subject, sometimes more than one, refers to the subject of the print - Classical/Mythological, Caricature, Animals, Travel, Pastoral, Music lesson, etc.
Some fields in a bibliographic record related to a print in the Miller collection and the artist who created it:
- Artist
- Artist dates
- Artist role
- Artist nationality
- Title
- Date created
- Century
- Medium
- Instrument
- Subject
Fields related especially to reproductive prints, and other names associated with individual prints:
- Artist notes
- Original artist
- Related names
A large proportion of the prints in the Miller collection are Reproductive prints. This means that the print is a copy of another artist's work. The field Artist notes in the catalogue record refers to the original artist whose work served as the model for the print in the Miller collection. (In the case of photographs of art works in the Miller collection, the names of the artists who created the original paintings or drawings in European museums are given in the Artist notes field, as well.) A Reproductive print is an original work of art by an engraver, etcher, or lithographer which is based on a drawing or a painting by another, more well-known artist, such as Giorgione, Titian, Rubens, Callot, Watteau, or Teniers. Thus, the print that is in the Miller collection may date to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but the image may represent a painting, drawing, or even another print by an artist from an earlier century. In the case of a Reproductive print, then, the instruments represented in an eighteenth-century print may represent musical instruments from a much earlier period and often they were drawn or painted by an artist of a different nationality than the engraver of the print. For example, Dorigny, a French artist who worked in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, made an etching after a fresco by Raphael, an Italian painter who lived in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century. Sometimes the name of the artist who created the print in the Miller collection is unknown, but the name of the artist who created the original art work is known: For example, Unknown artist after Callot, or Unknown artist after Jordaens. Thus, a field was created for Original artist so that one may search the names of the original artists whose works were copied by the printmakers represented in the Miller collection. Each reproductive print, then, has at least two artists' names associated with it. Sometimes, even more artists are associated with a print. For example, a print was often made after a drawing that was, in turn, based on an original painting. Thus, another field was added to the bibliographic record, Related names, so that one might search other artists' names associated with individual prints in the Miller collection.
Many prints in the Miller collection served as book illustrations. For these prints, authors associated with the book are included in the catalogue record for a print. For example, the abbé de Saint-Non compiled a book on the early excavations at Herculaneum, the abbé Prévost compiled a 25-volume book on the history of travel, and Jacob Cats was a writer of proverbs whose books were extremely popular in seventeenth-century Holland and editions were still being published into the eighteenth century. The names of these authors and others are included in the Related names field, so that they, too, might be available to the researcher. Names of former collectors of the Miller prints are also included in the Related names field. For example, two prints in the Miller collection were once owned by Friedrich August II, King of Saxony (1797-1854), thus, his name and other collectors' names are entered under the Related names category.
Indexes in this Web presentation will provide the following broad search capabilities: Artists [including Authors and Collectors]; Artist nationality; Century; and Instruments.