Marcantonio Raimondi
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists mainly of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print
Old master print
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...
. He also systematized a technique of engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
that became dominant in Italy and elsewhere.
Early years
Marcantonio Raimondi was born around 1480-2, probably in ArgineMolinella
Molinella is a comune in the Province of Bologna in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about 30 km northeast of Bologna...
, near Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Marcantonio received his training in the workshop of the famous goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
and painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
of Bologna, Francesco Raibolini
Francesco Raibolini
Francesco Raibolini , called Francia, was an Italian painter, goldsmith, and medallist from Bologna, who was also director of the city mint....
, best known as Francia. Vasari, a biographer, writes that Marcantonio quickly demonstrated more aptitude than Francia, and started designing and producing fashionable waist-buckles (among other items) in niello
Niello
Niello is a black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides, used as an inlay on engraved or etched metal. It can be used for filling in designs cut from metal...
, engraved metal which is filled in with alloy in a contrasting colour. This is doubted, however, by Hind, who sees no evidence of a background in niello technique in his early engravings.
No paintings produced by Marcantonio are known or documented, although some drawings survive. His first dated engraving, Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe
Pyramus and Thisbe are two characters of Roman mythology, whose love story of ill-fated lovers is also a sentimental romance.The tale is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.-Plot:...
, comes from 1505, although a number of undated works come from the years before this. From 1505–1511, Marcantonio engraved about 80 pieces, with a wide variety of subject matter, from pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, to religious scenes.
His early works use his own compositions, combining elements from Francia and other North Italian artists, and like all Italian printmakers in these years he was strongly affected by the enormously accomplished prints of Dürer, which were widely distributed in Italy. Like other printmakers such as Giulio Campagnola
Giulio Campagnola
Giulio Campagnola was an Italian engraver and painter, whose few, rare, prints translated the rich Venetian Renaissance style of oil paintings of Giorgione and the early Titian into the medium of engraving; to further his exercises in gradations of tone, he also invented the stipple technique...
, he borrowed elements of Dürer's landscapes in a cut and paste fashion, and also borrowed from his technique. Dürer was in Bologna in 1506, as was Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, and he may have met one or both of them.
Reproductions
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
series, the Life of the Virgin
Life of the Virgin
The Life of the Virgin, showing narrative scenes from the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a common subject for pictorial cycles in Christian art, often complementing, or forming part of, a cycle on the Life of Christ. In both cases the number of scenes shown varies greatly with the space...
. This was extremely common practice, although normally engravers copied other expensive engravings rather than the cheaper woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
s. However Dürer's woodcuts had raised the standard of the medium considerably, and since Marcantonio continued to copy a large number of both Dürer's engravings and woodcuts, he must have found it profitable.
His early copies included Dürer's famous AD monogram
Monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a...
, and Dürer made a complaint to the Venetian Government, which won him some legal protection for his monogram, but not his compositions, in Venetian territory - an important case in the slowly evolving history of intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
law.
Marcantonio appears to have spent some of the last half of the decade in Venice, but no dates are known.
Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and entered the circle of artists surrounding Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
. This influence began showing up in engravings titled The Climbers (in which he reproduced part of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's Soldiers surprised bathing, also called Battle of Cascina
Battle of Cascina (Michelangelo)
The Battle of Cascina is an influential lost artwork by Michelangelo.-Origins:The painting was commissioned from Michelangelo by Piero Soderini, statesman of the Republic of Florence. It was intended to be a fresco painted on a wall of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio...
). After a reproduction of a work by Raphael, entitled Lucretia, Raphael trained and assisted Marcantonio personally.
Another famous engraving, the Judgement of Paris, dated 1515 or 1516, after Raphael, became the composition source for Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
when he painted the The Luncheon on the Grass
The Luncheon on the Grass
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe – originally titled Le Bain – is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet created in 1862 and 1863. The painting depicts the juxtaposition of a female nude and a scantily dressed female bather on a picnic with two fully dressed men in a rural setting...
.
The two started a successful printing establishment under a colorgrinder, Il Baveria, that quickly expanded into an engraving school with Marcantonio at the head. Among his most distinguished pupils were Marco Dente
Marco Dente
Marco Dente was an Italian engraver of the Renaissance. He was also called Marco da Ravenna. He was a pupil of Marcantonio Raimondi. His best works are copies after Baccio Bandinelli, Giulio Romano, Raphael and his master.-References:...
(Marco da Ravenna), Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio
Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio known also as Jacobus Parmensis and Jacobus Veronensis was an eminent Italian engraver, born at Verona...
and Agostino de Musi (Agostino Veneziano
Agostino Veneziano
Agostino Veneziano, whose real name was Agostino de' Musi, was an important and prolific Italian engraver of the Renaissance.-Life:...
).
Later years
Marcantonio and his pupils continued to make engravings based upon Raphael's work, even after Raphael's death in 1520. In many instances, Marcantonio would not copy the finished painting, but would instead worked from early sketches and drafts. This method produced variations on a theme and were moderately successful.Around 1524, Marcantonio was briefly imprisoned by Pope Clement VII
Pope Clement VII
Clement VII , born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534.-Early life:...
for making the I modi
I Modi
I Modi , also known as The Sixteen Pleasures or under the Latin title De omnibus Veneris Schematibus, is a famous erotic book of the Italian Renaissance in which a series of sexual positions were explicitly depicted in engravings. While the original edition was apparently completely destroyed by...
set of erotic engravings, from the designs of Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...
, which were later accompanied by sonnets written by Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography.- Life :...
. At the intercession of the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, Baccio Bandinelli and Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino was an Italian author, playwright, poet and satirist who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography.- Life :...
, he was released, and set to work on his plate of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence after Bandinelli.
During the Sack of Rome
Sack of Rome (1527)
The Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527 was a military event carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, then part of the Papal States...
, in 1527, he was forced to pay a heavy ransom by the Spaniards and fled in poverty. It is unclear where he stayed after his departure from Rome until his death in 1534.
Biographical information
- Artcyclopedia: Marcantonio Raimondi (1480 - 1527)
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Marcantonio Raimondi
- Marcantonio Raimondi (Getty Museum)