‘Stampe Popolari Lombarde’ — Lombard Popular Prints
Milano, Italy: Electa Editrice, 1976. Limited Edition. Near Fine Hardcover in a Fine Dust Jacket.
A richly illustrated folio capturing the everyday visual world of Lombardy through popular prints—devotional images, rural labor, seasonal rituals, festivals, and folk allegory. Reproduced from rare woodcuts and engravings, many hand-colored, these images reflect the lived experience of northern Italy beyond academic or elite art traditions.
The volume assembles a wide range of material drawn from regional archives and private collections, reproduced at a scale that preserves both compositional detail and printing texture. Full-page plates and double-page spreads are accompanied by scholarly commentary situating the imagery within local traditions of belief, work, and communal life. Together, the prints reveal how visual material circulated among ordinary households as a shared cultural language.
Limited edition, this copy numbered 46 from a total printing of 1,000 copies, of which 100 were hors commerce and 900 numbered. Profusely illustrated throughout in both color and black-and-white. Large folio format; approximately 14 × 11 inches.
Hardcover in the original dust jacket, housed in the publisher’s slipcase. The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; plates bright and unfaded. A small bump to the rear corner, otherwise Near Fine. Dust jacket Fine. Slipcase shows only light, even shelf handling.
A substantial visual reference documenting the popular print culture of Lombardy, presenting devotional imagery, seasonal calendars, rural occupations, festivals, allegories, and domestic life as preserved through woodcuts, engravings, and hand-colored prints. Rather than focusing on elite or academic art, this work records imagery made for everyday circulation—objects intended to educate, commemorate, entertain, and reinforce communal identity.
Giorgio Lise draws from regional archives and private collections to illustrate how popular prints functioned as a shared visual language in northern Italy, bridging folk tradition, religious practice, and early mass communication. The volume’s large folio format and high-quality reproductions make it especially useful to collectors, designers, and institutions interested in European folk art, social history, and the transmission of visual culture.
Item #000321
Price: $95.00
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