CROMOLITHOGRAPHY

The 551 plates in the Ampelografia Universale Storica Illustrata owe their extraordinary aesthetic quality – as well as to the skill of the illustrators – to the technique with which they were produced, the chromolithograph.

The technique of chromolithography, a polychromic evolution of the lithograph, was extraordinarily successful throughout the XIX century, thanks to the excellent yield of the colour illustrations for editorial use and publicity, and consisted in the selection of spot and halftone colours to which a drawing in thick pencil on various lithographic stones corresponded. The overlapping printing of the various matrices enabled the attainment of a vast array of tonalities, resulting in amazing effects for the time, in terms of brilliancy of colour and detail of the pictures. Still today, the beauty of the chromolithographs produced between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries possess undying charm, and are the most sought-after in collectors markets.