Engravers and Etchers / Six Lectures Delivered on the Scammon Foundation at the Art Institute of Chicago, March 1916

ANDREA MANTEGNA is, both by his art and his influence, the most significant figure in early Italian engraving. His method or viewpoint is a determining feature in much of the best work which was produced during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, until the influence of Raphael, transmitted through Marcantonio, with a technical mode based upon the manner of Albrecht Dürer, completely changed the current of Italian engraving, seducing it from what might have developed into an original creative art, and condemned it to perpetual servitude as the handmaid of painting.

Andrea Mantegna, born in 1431, at Vicenza, and consequently Pollaiuolo’s senior by one year, was adopted, at the age of ten, by Squarcione, in Padua. Squarcione appears to have been less a painter than a contractor, undertaking commissions to be executed by artists in his employ. He was likewise a dealer in antiquities, and in his shop the young Mantegna must have met many of the leading humanists who had made Padua famous as a seat of classical learning. From them he drew in and absorbed that passion for imperial Rome which was to color his life and his art. His dream was of forms more beautiful than those of everyday life, built of some substance finer and less perishable than the flesh of frail humanity; and as years went by his work takes on, in increasing measure, a grander and more majestic aspect. Fortunate for us is it that in his mature period, when his style was fully formed, he himself was impelled, by influences of which later we shall speak, to take up the graving tool and with it produce the seven imperishable masterpieces which, beyond peradventure, we may claim as his authentic work.

The Virgin and Child, the earliest of his engravings, can hardly have been executed before 1475, and maybe not until after 1480, when Mantegna had reached his fiftieth year. Mr. Hind points out that there is a simplicity and directness about it which recalls quite early work, similarly conceived, such as the Adoration of the Kings of 1454; but the reasons which he advances are of equal weight in assigning it to a later date, and I am convinced that the intensity of mother-love expressed in the poise and face of the Virgin betokens a deeper feeling, a broader humanity, than one normally would expect in a youth of twenty-three, even though he be illumined with that flame of genius which burned so brightly in Mantegna.

Technically, the plate plainly shows the hand of an engraver not yet master of his medium. It is marked with all the characteristics which we associate with Mantegna’s work: the strong outline, ploughed with repeated strokes of a rather blunt instrument into a plate of unbeaten copper or some yet softer metal; the diagonal shade lines widely spaced; and the light strokes blending all into a harmonious whole. In an impression of the first state, in the British Museum, there is a tone, similar to sulphur-tint, over portions of the plate, noticeably in the faces of the mother and child. How it was produced is still a matter of conjecture, but that it adds much to the beauty of the print is beyond question.

The Bacchanalian Group with Silenus and the Bacchanalian Group with a Wine-Press (which, like the Battle of the Sea-Gods, may be joined together so as to form one long, horizontal composition) show greater skill on the part of the engraver. Mantegna’s increasing passion for the antique is reflected in the standing figure to the left, who with his left hand reaches up towards the wreath with which he is about to be crowned, while resting his right hand upon a horn of plenty. This figure is obviously inspired by the Apollo Belvedere, while the standing faun, at the extreme right, filled with the sheer delight of mere animal existence, is a delightful creation in Mantegna’s happiest mood.

The two plates of the Battle of the Sea-Gods may be assigned, on technical grounds, to about the same period as the two Bacchanals. The drawing which Durer made of the right-hand portion, as also of the Bacchanalian Group with Silenus, both dated 1494, conclusively prove that these engravings antedate the completion of the Triumph of Cæsar. Though Mantegna borrowed his material from the antique, he has so shaped it to his ends, so stamped upon it the impress of his own personality, as to make of it not an echo of classic art, but an original creation of compelling force and charm. “These are not the mighty gods of Olympus but the inferior deities of Nature, of the Earth and the Sea, who acknowledge none of the higher obligations and who display unchecked their wanton elemental nature, giving a loose rein to all the exuberance of their joy in living.... These creatures of the sea frolic about in the water, turbulent and wanton as the waves.... The combat with those harmless-looking weapons is probably not meant to be in earnest; a vent for their superfluous energy is all they seek.”[9]

To a somewhat later period belongs the Entombment. There is nothing of the meek spirit of the Redeemer in this passionate plate. The hard, lapidary landscape is in accord with the figures, which might, not unfittingly, find a place upon some triumphal arch. Three crosses crown the distant hill. At the right stands St. John, a magnificent figure, giving utterance to his unspeakable grief, while the Virgin, sinking in a swoon, is supported by one of the holy women.

Here is none of that tenderness which we associate with the divine tragedy, none of that grace and beauty which inheres in the work of many of the Italian painters of the Renaissance. All is stark and harsh. It is not food for babes, but it is superb.

The Risen Christ Between Saints Andrew and Longinus is Mantegna’s last engraving. Christ towers above the two subsidiary figures, with a form and bearing which would better befit a Roman Emperor returning in triumph. In this plate, above all others, Mantegna’s technique shines forth as not only adequate, but as beyond question the best—perhaps the only one—to convey his message. Translated into another mode, one feels that it would lose much of its appeal. It has been suggested that the engraving was made as a project for a group of statuary—perhaps for the high altar of S. Andrea, in Mantua, raised above the most precious relic possessed by the city, the Blood of Christ, brought to Mantua by Longinus—a supposition borne out by the statuesque impressiveness of the group and by the fact that Christ gazes downwards, as though from a height.

Although 1480 is the earliest date to which we can assign the first of Mantegna’s original engravings, there were in existence, at least five years before that time, engravings by other hands after designs by the master, and it may have been either to protect himself from unauthorized and fraudulent copyists, or as an artistic protest against the incapacity of his translators, that Mantegna was compelled to take up the graver. There has come down to us a letter, dated September 15, 1475, addressed by Simone di Ardizone, of Reggio, to the Marquis Lodovico, of Mantua, complaining to the prince of Mantegna’s behavior towards him. His story was that “Mantegna, upon his arrival in Mantua, made him splendid offers, and treated him with great friendliness. Actuated by feelings of compassion, however, towards his old friend, Zoan Andrea, a painter in Mantua, from whom prints (stampe), drawings, and medals had been stolen, and wishing to help in the restoration of the plates, he had worked with his friend for four months. As soon as this came to Mantegna’s knowledge he proceeded to threats, and one evening Ardizone and Zoan Andrea had been assaulted by ten or more armed men and left for dead in the square.”

The letter is “proof that, in Mantua, in the year 1475, two professional engravers, one of whom clearly designates himself as such, were at work.... It is clear that Mantegna had a very special interest in the engravings and drawings which had been stolen from Zoan Andrea, and which Ardizone, ‘out of compassion,’ helped to restore, since he sought by force to impede the engraver’s work. His anger can also be explained by the supposition that Zoan Andrea’s engravings were facsimiles of his own drawings which the former had succeeded in obtaining possession of and had used as designs for his engravings; and that being unable to win Ardizone’s assistance in his work Mantegna thought himself obliged to protest, by violent means, against this infringement of his artistic rights.”[10]

It is probable that to this drastic and effectual method of protecting against piracy his own artistic property we owe the two renderings, both incomplete, of the Triumph of Cæsar. One may well be the series upon which Zoan Andrea and Ardizone were working when Mantegna brought their labors to an untimely close; whereas the second series, although authorized by Mantegna himself, may have seemed to him, not without just cause, so to misinterpret his original drawings as to impel him to abandon the project and, in future, engrave his own designs. The Triumph series naturally remained incomplete, since, like every great artist, Mantegna would hardly feel disposed to repeat, in another medium, a subject which he had already treated. Of the Triumph plates, the Elephants approximates most closely Mantegna’s undoubted work; but the drawing lacks distinction, and there is a feeling of “tightness” throughout the whole plate, which makes it impossible to attribute the engraving to Mantegna’s own hand. The plate which immediately follows—Soldiers Carrying Trophies—was left unfinished. The subject is repeated in the reverse sense and with the addition of a pilaster to the right. This pilaster is probably Mantegna’s original design for the upright members dividing the nine portions of the painted Triumphs, since the procession is supposed to pass upon the further side of a row of columns, the figures and animals being so arranged as to extend over one picture to the next, with a sufficient space between them for the introduction of the pilaster.

The Adoration of the Magi, which for some reason likewise remained unfinished, is taken directly from the central portion of the triptych in the Uffizi. The engraving, aside from its intrinsic beauty, is of especial interest as affording an example of the method adopted by Mantegna and his School. The structural lines are deeply incised, in many cases by repeated strokes of the graver. The diagonal shading is then added and the plate carried forward and completed, bit by bit. This engraving, at one time accounted an original work by the master himself, has received of recent years more than its merited share of harsh criticism. It obviously falls far short, in beauty, of Mantegna’s painting; but, for all that, it preserves many of the essential qualities of its immediate original, and one cannot but admire the manner in which an engraver, certainly not of the first rank, has captured the spirit of humility and adoration, eloquent in every line of the king at the left, humbly bending to receive the benediction of the Christ Child.

By an engraver of the Mantegna School, perhaps Zoan Andrea, working in Mantegna’s manner and after his design for the Parnassus in the Louvre, is Four Women Dancing—one of the most charming and graceful prints of the period. It differs in many particulars from the painting (assigned to the year 1497) and almost certainly translates Mantegna’s drawing, rather than the painting itself.

To Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, of whose life, apart from what we may learn from a study of his work, we know substantially nothing, may be attributed the Holy Family with Saints Elizabeth and John, based upon a design by Mantegna, of about 1500, and probably engraved at a date prior to Mantegna’s death, September 13, 1506. At a later period, Giovanni came under the influence of Marcantonio Raimondi, whose style he imperfectly assimilated.

In the British Museum there is a unique impression of a Profile Bust of a Young Woman, which has been ascribed, with some show of reason, to Leonardo da Vinci. Its intrinsic beauty might lend some color to this attribution, were it not that, even in its re-worked condition, the texture and flow of the young woman’s abundant tresses, the treatment of the flowing ribbons, and the delicate shading in the face and upon the garment, betray the hand of the trained engraver.

Nicoletto Rosex da Modena was working from about 1490 to 1515. He engraved almost a hundred plates, the majority of them being presumably from his own designs, though in the Adoration of the Shepherds the influence of Schongauer is markedly apparent, and in Fortune and St. Sebastian the inspiration of Mantegna is clearly to be seen.

The group of trees in the Fate of the Evil Tongue is borrowed from Dürer’s print of Hercules, while the Turkish Family and the Four Naked Women—the last-named being dated 1500—are copies of Dürer’s engravings. Vedriani, writing of Nicoletto as a painter, speaks of him as “chiefly distinguished in perspective,” and among the most charming of his plates in which this quality is seen is Orpheus. The bare tree is suggestive of Martin Schongauer, while the birds and beasts, including a dog, a peacock, a weasel, a monkey playing with a tortoise, a squirrel, a snake, a piping bird, two rabbits, a fox, and a stag, not to speak of the ducks and swans in the water, though not copied from northern originals, have all the charm and life-like quality which we find in the work of German engravers such as The Master of St. John the Baptist and The Master E. S. of 1466.

Concerning Jacopo de’ Barbari there is a wealth of biographical material, in contrast with the meagerness of our knowledge concerning the earlier Italian engravers. Born at Venice, between 1440 and 1450, he is known to have worked between 1500 and 1508 for the Emperor and various other princes in different towns of Germany. He was at Nuremberg in 1505, and in 1510 he was in the service of the Archduchess Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, while, in the inventory of the Regent’s pictures of 1515-1516, he is referred to as dead.

Not one of the thirty engravings by Jacopo is signed with his name, initials, or any form of monogram, nor does any of them bear a date. His emblem is the caduceus, which appears on the greater number of his prints; and those upon which it is lacking can readily be identified by his individual style. This style undergoes certain modifications with the passing years. In the early period, the shading, for the most part, is in parallel lines, which follow the contour of the figure, the figure itself being long and sinuous. In his middle and later period he indulged more freely in cross-hatching, and the faces are modelled with greater delicacy.

Stress has been laid upon the influence exerted by Jacopo upon Dürer’s engraving; but with the exception of the Apollo and Diana this influence is theoretical rather than artistic. Dürer, in one of the manuscript sketches, dated 1523, for his book The Theory of Human Proportions, writes: “Howbeit, I can find none such who hath written aught about how to form a canon of human proportion, save one man—Jacopo by name, born at Venice, and a charming painter. He showed me the figures of a man and a woman, which he had drawn according to a canon of proportions, so that, at that time, I would rather have seen what he meant than be shown a new kingdom.... Then, however, I was still young and had not heard of such things before. Howbeit, I was very fond of art, so I set myself to discover how such a canon might be wrought out.” Dürer undoubtedly refers to the period of his first visit to Venice, and it is, accordingly, in Dürer’s earliest plates that we see most clearly the influence of the older master on his technical method. Dürer soon outstripped Jacopo in everything that pertains to the technical side of engraving and worked out for himself a method which, for his purpose, was substantially perfect.

In such plates as Judith and St. Catherine, Jacopo’s love for long, flowing lines finds its fullest expression. There is a grace about these single figures which is not without appealing charm, though obviously they leave something to be desired on the score of solidity and structure.

Girolamo Mocetto, born in Murano before 1458, was living at Venice in 1514, where he died after 1531. According to Vasari, Mocetto was, at some time, an assistant to Giovanni Bellini, whose influence may be traced in his work. His engravings are unpleasing in style and often clumsy in draughtsmanship. He owes such merit as he may possess to the originals which he interpreted. There is a compelling power in Judith, after Mantegna’s design, which atones for even so shapeless a member as Judith’s right hand. The grandeur of the plate is, however, derived from Mantegna. Mocetto has done little more than traduce it; but, even so, the engraving is noteworthy, inasmuch as it preserves for us a noble composition, of which otherwise we might remain in ignorance. The Baptism of Christ is adapted, with some modifications, from Giovanni Bellini’s painting executed between 1500 and 1510. In the engraving, the landscape, which differs radically from that in Bellini’s painting, may possibly be original with Mocetto, though it recalls the work of Cima, whose Baptism, in S. Giovanni in Bragora, Venice, was painted in 1494.

Benedetto Montagna was, like Mocetto, painter as well as engraver. His earliest engravings are executed in a large, open manner, which can be seen to advantage in the Sacrifice of Abraham. The outline is strongly defined and the shading chiefly in parallel lines. Where cross-hatching is used, it is laid generally at right angles. Later, Montagna modifies his style and adopts the finer system of cross-hatching perfected by Dürer, whose influence, especially in the backgrounds, is clearly to be traced, and whose Nativity, of the year 1504, Montagna copied in reverse. St. Jerome Beneath an Arch of Rock belongs to this later period, and the plate is probably based upon a painting by Bartolommeo Montagna, the engraver’s father.

Giulio Campagnola, born at Padua about 1482, is known to have been working in Venice in 1507 and is assumed to have died shortly after 1514. According to contemporary accounts, he was a youth of marvellously precocious and varied gifts and promise. To his musical and literary accomplishments, he added those of painter, miniaturist, engraver, and sculptor.

His engravings betray markedly the influence of Giorgione, and his manner of engraving may have been an attempt to imitate the rich softness of that master’s painting. He worked out and perfected a technical system all his own. In his earliest manner he works in pure line, as in his copies of Dürer’s engravings and in such plates as the Old Shepherd and St. Jerome.

In the Young Shepherd, the Astrologer, and Christ and the Woman of Samaria, the composition is first engraved in simple, open lines, with little cross-hatching. The plate is then carried forward and completed by a system of delicate flicks, so disposed as to produce a harmonious result, obliterating substantially all trace of the preliminary line work. In the third group, to which two prints belong—Naked Woman Reclining and The Stag—no lines at all are used, and the plate is carried out, from first to last, in flick work.

Only one of Campagnola’s plates is dated—the Astrologer, of 1509. In this he shows himself ripe, both as artist and as craftsman. To an earlier period would seem to belong the Ganymede, in which the landscape is a faithful copy of Dürer’s engraving of the Virgin and Child with a Monkey. The place which, in the original engraving, was occupied by the Virgin, is now filled by a clump of trees.

St. John the Baptist is, all things considered, Campagnola’s masterpiece. The figure is unquestionably based upon a drawing by Mantegna, and has all the largeness and grandeur of style which characterizes the work of that master. The landscape background may be original with the engraver but it clearly shows the influence of Giorgione. In this superb plate Campagnola’s method of combining line work with delicate flick work can be studied at its best. The Young Shepherd, known in two states—the first in pure line, the second completed with flick work—is as charming and graceful as St. John the Baptist is monumental. It justly deserves the reputation and popularity which it enjoys among print lovers.

Christ and the Woman of Samaria is treated in a more open manner than either of the two preceding engravings. The beautiful landscape, as also the hill to the left, is entirely in line, while the flick work upon the figures and garments and, even more noticeably, in the foreground to the right, is of a more open character than that which appears in the Young Shepherd. It may belong to the latter part of Campagnola’s career as an engraver. There is an amplitude in the design of the seated woman which suggests Giorgione and Palma, though one cannot definitely name any painting by either of these masters from which Campagnola has borrowed his figure.

The last of Campagnola’s plates, left unfinished at his death and completed by Domenico Campagnola, is Shepherds in a Landscape or, as it is sometimes called, the Musical Shepherds. The original drawing, in reverse, for the right-hand half of this print is in the Louvre. It is unquestionably by Giulio Campagnola; but, equally without question, the left-hand portion of the engraving itself is by Domenico. Whether Domenico was a close relative or merely a pupil of Giulio’s has not been determined; but the Shepherds in a Landscape conclusively proves that he was at least the artistic heir of the older master. Domenico’s style is in marked contrast to that of Giulio. Flick work is almost absent from his engravings, which are executed in rather open lines, more in the mode of an etcher than of an engraver working according to established tradition. The skies, in particular, have a romantic quality which is all their own, and which can be seen to advantage in the Shepherd and the Old Warrior, dated 1517.

Marcantonio Raimondi, born in Bologna about 1480, for over three centuries enjoyed a reputation eclipsing that of any other Italian master. Of recent years, however, upon insufficient grounds, he has been somewhat pushed aside and belittled as a “reproductive engraver,” his critics wilfully forgetting the fact that, with the exception of Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, the Italian School is, in the main, derivative, and cannot boast of any original engravers of world-wide fame, such as Schongauer or Dürer. But Marcantonio was far from being a mere translator of alien works. “He is like some great composer who borrows another’s theme only to make it his own by the originality of his setting.”[11]

The earliest influence which we may trace in Marcantonio’s work is that of the famous goldsmith and painter, Francesco Francia, with whom Marcantonio served his apprenticeship. Certain nielli, among them Pyramus and Thisbe and Arion on the Dolphin, have been assigned to the young Marcantonio and attributed to this period of his life.

St. George and the Dragon is strongly reminiscent of the niello technique, with its dark shadows, against which the figures stand out in relief. The landscape is clearly borrowed or adapted from engravings in Dürer’s earlier period, the trees at the left, in particular, recalling the Hercules.

To this early period likewise belongs Pyramus and Thisbe, which bears the earliest date—1505—which we find upon any of his engravings. It may well have been executed during his residence in Venice, between 1505 and 1509.

The Bathers, of 1510, is an artistic record of Marcantonio’s visit to Florence, on his way to Rome. The figures are taken from Michelangelo’s cartoon of the Battle of Pisa; but the landscape, including the thatched barn to the right, is a faithful copy, in reverse, of Lucas van Leyden’s plate of Mahomet and the Monk Sergius; for Marcantonio, like all great artists, freely borrowed his material wherever he found it, shaping it to his own ends.

According to Vasari, it was the Death of Lucretia, engraved shortly after Marcantonio’s arrival in Rome, about 1510, after a drawing by Raphael, which attracted the attention of that master and showed him how much he might benefit by the reproduction of his work. One would be inclined to think that the Death of Dido rather than the Death of Lucretia might have been the means of bringing about this artistic collaboration; for, if Vasari is correct, the immediate result of Raphael’s personal influence upon Marcantonio was harmful rather than helpful, the Lucretia by general consent being the finer plate of the two.

It is significant that none of Marcantonio’s engravings interprets any existing painting by Raphael. We may infer that the engraver worked entirely after drawings supplied to him by Raphael—either drawings made for the purpose of being interpreted in terms of engraving, or the original studies for paintings, which, in their elaboration, were subjected to many modifications and changes.

Among his most interesting engravings are Saint Cecilia, which may be compared, or rather contrasted, with the famous painting in Bologna; the Virgin and Child in the Clouds, which later appears as the Madonna di Foligno; and Poetry, based on a study by Raphael for the fresco in the Camera della Segnatura, in the Vatican.

The Massacre of the Innocents, usually accounted the engraver’s masterpiece, is one of several subjects of which two plates exist. Authorities disagree as to which is the “original,” but some familiarity with both versions leads one to think that Marcantonio may well have been his own interpreter. At least one cannot name certainly any other engraver capable of producing either of the two versions of the Massacre of the Innocents, in point of drawing or of technique.

Among Marcantonio’s portrait plates one of the most attractive is that of Philotheo Achillini (“The Guitar Player”), which is in his early manner and probably dates from his Bolognese period. It may be based upon a drawing by Francia, but the trees and distant landscape all show markedly the influence of Dürer.

To a much later period, and engraved in Marcantonio’s most mature manner, belongs the portrait of Pietro Aretino. Vasari refers to this plate as “engraved from life,” but its richness and color would seem to point to an original by Titian or Sebastiano del Piombo.

After the death of Raphael, in 1520, Marcantonio’s engraving undergoes a change—a change for the worse, as might be expected, since a number of his plates are interpretations of designs by Giulio Romano. There is less care in the drawing, less delicacy in the management of the burin, and, although we may pity him for the loss of all that he possessed at the sack of Rome, in 1527, we cannot greatly regret that, as an engraver, Marcantonio’s active life terminates with that date.

ITALIAN ENGRAVING: MANTEGNA TO
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI

BIBLIOGRAPHY