Illustration

Graphic material usually accompanying a related text. It may be representational art, maps, diagrams, photographs or other items whose characteristics are that they are visual communication, and, according to present publication technologies, that they are reproducible, i.e. printable. Reproductions of art in art books may loosely be called illustrations in so far as they exemplify points in an accompanying explanatory text. Some ilustrations may be executed after and separately from a publication and in some eases long after, as illustrations for Homer, Virgil, Dante, etc. Medieval illumination of manuscrips or black-printed books included examples of both decoration, and illustration. Great illustrators have induded Dürer, the younger Holbein, the elder Cranach, and Titian. In later time there have been a number whose work is considered the standard illustration for a particular text. WIlliam Blake was a unique example of illustrator-poet and in recent times the writer-illustrator Kahlil Gibran enjoyed considerable popularity.