Anca Elisabeta Tatay and Cornel Tatai-Baltă, Gravorul Mihail Strilbițchi (a doua jumătate a secolului al XVIII-lea) [Mihail Strilbițchi, The Engraver (Second Half of the Eighteenth Century)], Editura Mega, 2023, 345 p.

Abstract

Anca Elisabeta Tatay and Cornel Tatai-Baltă are well-known researchers of the art and technique illustration of early Roma­nian book (1508–1830) and authors of reference books on the engravers who worked in the print­ing press of Blaj, Sibiu, Brașov, and Bucharest, and at the Romanian sec­tion of the printing house in Buda in the seven­teenth-nineteenth centuries. Their recent book, published in 2023 by Mega Publishing House in Cluj-Napoca, is the first work in Romanian literature focused solely on Mihail Strilbițchi’s engraving activity. The volume also builds upon the authors’ previous contributions to this topic, which were presented in three articles published between 2021 and 2023. As pointed out by Anca Elisabeta Tatay and Cornel Tatai-Baltă in the introduction, while the works of the most important engravers who illustrated early Romanian books are well known, “the same cannot be said about the graphic works created by Mihail Strilbițchi (…). That is why we considered it necessary to publish a comprehensive study dedicated to the most valuable and prolific engraver in Moldavia in the second half of the eighteenth century” (p. 10).