gained to account in interpreting the work of a master of a quite other
stamp. Up till the year 1510 Marcantonio had lived entirely at Bologna,
with the exception, it would appear, of a visit or visits to Venice. (A
few of his early engravings are from drawings of the school of
Giorgione.) Very soon afterwards he was attracted, for good and all,
into the circle which surrounded Raphael at Rome. Where or when he had
first made Raphael's acquaintance is uncertain. His passage to Rome by
way of Florence has been supposed to be marked by an engraving, dated
1510, and known as "The Climbers," _Les Grimpeurs_ (Bartsch, 487), in
which he has reproduced a portion of the design of Michelangelo's
cartoon of the Soldiers surprised bathing, and has added behind the
figures a landscape imitated from the then young Dutch engraver Lucas of
Leiden. Contemporary or somewhat earlier than this is a large engraving
done by him from a design by Baldassare Peruzzi, a Sienese artist drawn
about the same time into the Raphael circle. The piece in which he is
recorded to have first tried his hand after Raphael himself is the
Lucretia (Bartsch 192). From that time until he disappears in the
catastrophe of 1527, Marcantonio was almost exclusively engaged in
reproducing by means of engraving the designs of Raphael or of his
immediate pupils. Raphael, the story goes, was so delighted with the
print of the Lucretia that he personally trained and helped Marcantonio
afterwards. A printing establishment was set up under the charge of
Raphael's colour-grinder, Il Baviera, and the profits, in the early
stage of the business, were shared between the engraver and the printer.
The sale soon became very great; pupils gathered round about
Marcantonio, of whom the two most distinguished were Marco Dente, known
as Marco da Ravenna, and Agostino de' Musi, known as Agostino Veneziano;
and he and they, during the last ten years of Raphael's life, and for
several years following his death, gave forth a great profusion of
engravings after the master's work--not copying, in most instances, his
finished paintings, but working up, with the addition of simple
backgrounds and accessories, his first sketches and trials, which often
give the composition in a different form from the finished work, and are
all the more interesting on that account.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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