The Flagellation, from the Mysteries of the Rosary

One of the earliest print cycles offered with its own framing devices was the Florentine printmaker and dealer Francesco Rosselli’s fifteen engravings of The Life of the Virgin and Christ. Purchasers determined the order and format of display, choosing how to arrange the composite image and whether to glue it to an intermediary support or directly to the wall. It is possible that these and similar prints could also have been purchased preassembled, as an inventory of Rosselli’s shop lists prints on canvas. Indeed, a colored and varnished set on canvas with borders survives at the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.