PHILADELPHIA - Prints by Durer, Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt, Boucher, Goya and other master painters are featured in "The Early Modern Painter-Etcher," which runs through June 11 at the at the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania.

The exhibition surveys etchings from the 16th-18th centuries by more than 60 European artists who took up the challenge of making works on paper.  It highlights "experimental" sheets, which, in some cases, feature the single printed work an artist made.

"The Early Modern Painter-Etcher" is co-curated by Michael Cole, associate professor and graduate chair in Penn's Department of the History of Art, and Madeleine Viljoen, director of the La Salle University Art Museum.  The etchings on display are on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Princeton University Art Museum, the Arthur Ross Foundation and other major public and private collections.

"The guest curators are interested not so much in the development of printmaking generally as in the reasons why individual artists took up the specific print medium of etching," Dilys Winegrad, director/curator of the Arthur Ross Gallery, said.  "The exhibition is an opportunity to see works on paper that are seldom on public display."

"Because etching as a technology was so close to the practice of drawing, it lured painters, who would otherwise not have made prints, to try their hand at it," Viljoen said.  "It is exciting to see some of the best painters of Renaissance and Baroque Europe wrestling with the new medium."

The exhibition, accompanied by a full-length catalog from the Penn State University Press, will travel to The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Fla., and the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass., in the summer and fall.

 The exhibition is made possible by support from the The Halpern-Rogath Curatorial Seminar Fund and the Friends of the Arthur Ross Gallery.

 Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5p.m.  Additional  information is available at 215-898-2083 or www.upenn.edu/ARG.