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Spaightwood Galleries
120 Main Street, Upton MA 01568-6193; 800-809-3343
Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1527)
Marcantonio's Engravings after Durer's Small Woodcut Passion: Durer 1 / Durer 2 / Durer 3 / Durer 4
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Marcantonio was the object of one of the earliest suits by an artist against those appropriating his work as their own. As Vasari tells it in his Lives of the Artists, Marcantonio discovered a set of Albrecht Dürer's Small Woodcut Passion in Venice, spent all of his money to purchase it, and proceeded, much to Vasari's disgust, to make engraved copies of each the pieces including Dürer's monogram. (Vasari makes it clear that he thinks everyone ought to be imitating Italians, not vice versa.) Dürer made a trip to Venice and complained to the Senate that Marcantonio was stealing his work and misrepresenting it (since Dürer had made woodcuts, not engravings). The Senate decided that since the images belonged to all of Christianity, Dürer could not claim ownership, but that his name belonged to him, and so it ordered Marcantonio not to use Dürer's monogram in his own works. Vasari seems to have gotten some of the detail s wrong—it was Dürer's Life of the Virgin that Marcantonio was publishing with Dürer's monogram, not his Small Woodcut Passion, which is never found in Marcantonio's engravings with the monogram—but the mistake is understandable, since Marcantonio did subsequently make engraved copies of the Small Woodcut Passion as well.
After leaving Venice, Marcantonio went first to Florence, then on to Rome, which became his home and where he found success working with Raphael as the head of a workshop of engravers (including Marco Dente da Ravenna and Agostino dei Musi (called Agostine Veneziano) whose copies made Raphael's work known through Europe. The two artists became friends and Raimondi's first work for Raphael was The Death of Lucretia. This and later plates show the darks becoming less dramatic and the burin work more "open." Raphael left much to Raimondi, never giving him a finished picture but a pencil or pen outline-drawing, knowing that the proper treatment and elaboration would come from his engraver; consequently there is often a marked discrepancy between an oil by Raphael and Raimondi's engraving of it. Marcantonio's triumphs as an engraver in Rome gave him an international reputation. Durer wrote for proofs from his hand, and German engravers flocked to Rome to study under him.After Raphael's death from the plague in 1520, Marcantonio continued to work with the surviving members of Raphael's studio until the Sack of Rome in 1527, during which, according to Vasari, Marcantonio was taken prisoner and forced to sell everything he owned to ransom himself. Although his actual date of death, like his birthdate, is unknown, none of his works can be dated after 1527, and it is presumed that his death probably occurred soon after he was released from captivity.
Bibliography: There are 5 volumes in The Illustrated Bartsch devoted to the work of Marcantonio and his followers. See also Clay Dean and Theresa Fairbanks, Changing Impressions: Marcantonio Raimondi & Sixteenth-Century Print Connoisseurship (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1999); Innis H. Shoemaker and Elizabeth Broun, The Engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi (Lawrence KS: Spencer Museum of Art, 1981), the catalogue of a show that travelled from the Spencer Museum of Art to The Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina. The first biography of Marcantonio is to be found in Giorgio Vasrai's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors ad Architects, trans. A. B. Hinds (London: Everyman's Library, 1927; revised 1963), 4 vols. The biography of Marcantonio occurs in volume 3, pages 68-86. See also Lisa Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print (New Have: Yale University Press, 2004.
In the pages that follow, we are happy to present Marcantonio's engravings after Dürer's Small Woodcut Passion. All are in generally good condition, all generally have either thread margins or are cut on or just within the platemark. The scanner has made them look both less sharp and more uniform in tone than they are: the engravings present typical early sixteenth-century Italian aesthetics: clear but light (with a very few specified exceptions which are more richly printed). As one of the most important of the early 16th-century Italian engravers and a pioneer in running a large workshop that put itself at the service of one of the great painting master's of all time, Marcantonio anticipates the great master printers of our own times like Stanley William Hayter and Kenneth Tyler. He is also a great engraver in his own right. At the moment, his prints are drastically undervalued, but we feel that his work needs to be known to understand both the development of an Italian style in 16th century pre-Mannerist prinmaking and the traffic in prints and the circulation of images in the Renaissance.
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Marcantono Raimondi (attributed), Two boys wrestling. Pen and brown ink on thin early cream laid paper with narrow chain lines, c. 1500. Studies on a leg, a horse, and a drapery in pen ink verso. The subject of this drawing can be compared with a different drawing of wrestling putti by Marcantonio in the Pierpont Morgan Library (NYC). Similar angular contours can be seen in the legs of Romulus and Remus in Raimondi's drawing in the Uffizi of the Roman She-Wolf (c. 1500). The style of parallel lines and cross hatching used to model the bodies, the densely shaded background seen in his more finished drawings and the mixture of solidity and fluidity seen in the boidies of the putti are characteristic of the earliest drawings by the Bolognese printmaker. Image size: 152x85mm. Price: SOLD.
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Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1527), Lucretia (Bartsch 192). Engraving after Raphael, c. 1511-1512. Ours is a very good impression on laid paper. The story of Lucretia, a Roman matron whose husband's praise of her chastity incited Tarquinius, the son of the Roman king, to rape her, has long attracted the interest of writers as diverse as St. Augustine and Shakespeare, who wrote a narrative poem about her. Lucretia, after her rape, called together her relatives and asked if she was at fault. Upon being assured that she was not, she took a knife and stabbed herself lest other women in similar situations cite her as an example. Brutus led a revolt against the Tarquin family and, overthrowing them, established the Roman Republic. The inscription in Greek proclaims a moral: "It is better to die than to live in dishonor." St. Augustine strenuously disagreed, attributing her suicide either to her sense of complicity or to her pride at no longer being the most chaste of all Roman matrons. Image size: 205x130mm. Price: SOLD.
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Anea Vico (Parma 1523-Ferrara 1567), Lucretia (Bartsch 16). Engraving after Marcantonio Raimondi. Ours is a late impression on wove paper of this copy in reverse by Anea Vico of Marcantonio's original. Margins on three sides, trimmed on or inside platemark on bottom. Monogrammed "EV s[culpsit]" in plate. Vico and the Master of the Die were the two most prominent followers of Marcantonio Raimondi. Image size: 205x130mm. Price: $750.
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Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1527), Charity (B. 386 ii/ii). Engraving after Raphael. Good but light impression on laid paper published by Antonio Salamanca (fl. 1542-1548, Rome). Slalamanca bought up a large number of early 16th century copper plates and was instrumental in preserving the achievements of the early 16th century Italian printmakers, especially those working in Rome. Small margins all around. Image size: 217x105mm. Price: $1750.
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Raimondi School (Italian, fl. 1525-1550), ,Virgin and Child (B. 12). Engraving after Parmigianino. Good impression on laid paper trimmed within the platemark. Small loss to lower right corner, small stain in window are to the right of the Virgin's head. Some surface soiling. Image size: 222x125mm. Price: $1750.
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Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, c. 1480-c. 1527), Allegory of Prudence (B. 371). Engraving after Raphael? A very good impression on laid paper trimmed within the platemark; thin spot verso behind the head of the figure. Marcantonio left Venice after publishing engravings after Durer's woodcuts so good that Dürer came to Venice to complain. He went to Rome and established himself as an engraver, becoming Raphael's favorite. See Vasari's Lives, "Marcantonio Bolognese and other Engravers." Image size: 96x70mm. Price: $3500.
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Joseph and Potiphar's Wife (Bartsch 9). Original engraving. Good impression on laid paper with good margins published by Nicolo van Aelst (Brussels 1526-Rome, after 1612). Scarce! Image size:205x244mm. Price: $8500.
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Two nymphs supporting an antique vase. Original engraving, c. 1525. The owner of the plate allowed the Gazette des Beaux Arts to print an edition for the 1863 volume. With center-fold. Image size: 307x172mm. Price: SOLD.
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Raimondi School (Italian, fl. 1525-1550), Bacchante astride a goat (Raimondi-School, Bartsch 3). Very good impression of the only state with small margins on fine laid paper; some hand-coloring in pencil on the bodies of the Bacchante and Priapus. In good condition. Image size: 119x88x70mm. Price: $2000.
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Vulcan, Venus, Cupid, and 2 putti (Bartsch 227). Engraving (after Raphael?), c. 1525. Originally published by Antonio Salamanca in the 1540s; our impression is a later one on laid paper published in the mid-17th century. Some abrasion at top & left margins. Image size: 111x170mm. Price: $1250.
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Vulcan, Venus, Cupid, and 2 putti (Bartsch 227). Engraving (after Raphael?), c. 1525. Originally published by Antonio Salamanca in the 1540s; our impression is a later one on laid paper published in the mid-17th century. Some abrasion at top & left margins. Image size: 111x170mm. Price: $1250.
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Spaightwood Galleries, Inc.
To purchase, call us at 1-800-809-3343 (508-529-2511 in Upton MA & vicinity) or send an email to sptwd@verizon.net.
We accept AmericanExpress, DiscoverCard, MasterCard, and Visa.
We also accept wire transfers and paypal.
For directions and visiting information, please call. We are, of course, always available over the web and by telephone (see above for contact information). Click the following for links to past shows and artists. For a visual tour of the gallery, please click here. For information about Andy Weiner and Sonja Hansard-Weiner, please click here. For a list of special offers currently available, see Specials.
All works are sold with an unconditional guarantee of authenticity (as described in our website listing).
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Visiting hours: Saturday and Sunday noon to 6 pm and other times by arrangement.
Please call to confirm your visit. Browsers and guests are welcome.
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