ABSTRACT
The international market for prints during the second half of the eighteenth century provided a geographically dispersed network. Dealers, engravers/entrepreneurs, publishers and printers were to an unprecedented degree producing and distributing prints in series, collections, volumes and single sheets. The older printing houses in Nurnberg and Augsburg experienced noticeable competition from, among others, John Boydell in London, Pierre Françios Basan in Paris and the Remondinis in Bassano, Italy. From Boydell, Basan and the Remondinis issued reproductions of old and new masters, portrait series, topographical views, architectural and ornamental designs, scientific illustrations, mythological figures and much more. Their supply included both exclusive collections and a steady flow of cheaper prints. The latter were pictures to glue on snuff boxes and fans, portraits of celebrities or depictions of events such as princely entries or balloon flights. These popular prints were an important part of the eighteenth-century visual culture, although they have not been held in high esteem in eighteenth-century art theory or in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art historical research. Boydell, Basan and the Remondinis were not alone in their enterprises. Their interests were shared by numerous other distributors, dealers, merchants and publishers in most urban European centres, including Stockholm. 1 It was not, however, the commerce in itself that was new for the eighteenth century, but the explosive scope, the variation in supply and the increasing social and geographic dissemination.
