Anja Perse

My DPhil investigates the development of the single-sheet print industry in later sixteenth-century Venice. I focus on a series of innovative etchings and engravings that depict human behaviour through a moralising and satirical lens. These sheets first appeared in Venice the 1560s and went on to influence some of the most popular printed images throughout the Seicento. I ask what lay behind their success, and how a centre in which the single-sheet print publishing industry was still in its infancy at the time, especially compared to cities such as Rome and Antwerp, could produce new designs that would proved enduringly popular across the Italian peninsula and beyond.

Before starting my DPhil I completed an MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art (London) on prints and print culture in the early modern period. My broader interests and professional history include northern engravings and Renaissance and Baroque drawings.