Highlights from the print collection
An introduction to the print collection of the Royal Collection
The Fall of the Giants
1641 (this state published 1647)RCIN 807713
Bartolomeo Coriolano and Guido Reni collaborated on 24 chiaroscuro woodcuts, mostly in the last years of the artist's life when Reni was in financial difficulties. The Fall of the Giants was the most ambitious of these prints, published first in 1638; three years later Coriolano cut another set of blocks to produce a replica of the print, later issuing a reprint of that set with the date 1647. Consul Joseph Smith’s library, purchased by George III in 1762, included an album of prints by and after Reni which probably contained this woodcut.