Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo SoggiVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Many others have occupied themselves with copper-plate engraving, who,
although they have not attained to such perfection, have none the less
benefited the world with their labours, by bringing many scenes and
other works of excellent masters into the light of day, and by thus
giving the means of seeing the various inventions and manners of the
painters to those who are not able to go to the places where the
principal works are, and conveying to the ultramontanes a knowledge of
many things that they did not know. And although many plates have been
badly executed through the avarice of the printers, eager more for gain
than for honour, yet in certain others, besides those that have been
mentioned, there may be seen something of the good; as in the large
design of the Last Judgment of Michelagnolo Buonarroti on the front wall
of the Papal Chapel, engraved by Giorgio Mantovano, and in the
engravings by Giovan Battista de' Cavalieri of the Crucifixion of S.
Peter and the Conversion of S. Paul painted in the Pauline Chapel at
Rome. This Giovan Battista has also executed copper-plate engravings,
besides other designs, of the Meditation of S. John the Baptist, of the
Deposition from the Cross that Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra painted
in a chapel in the Trinita at Rome, of a Madonna with many Angels, and
of a vast number of other works. Moreover, many things taken from
Michelagnolo have been engraved by others at the commission of Antonio
Lanferri, who has employed printers for the same purpose. These have
published books of all the kinds of fishes, and also the Phaethon, the
Tityus, the Ganymede, the Archers, the Bacchanalia, the Dream, the
Pieta, and the Crucifix, all done by Michelagnolo for the Marchioness of
Pescara; and, in addition, the four Prophets of the Chapel and other
scenes and drawings have been engraved and published, but executed so
badly, that I think it well to be silent as to the names of those
engravers and printers.
But I must not be silent about the above-mentioned Antonio Lanferri and
Tommaso Barlacchi, for they, as well as others, have employed many young
men to engrave plates after original drawings by the hands of a vast
number of masters, insomuch that it is better to say nothing of these
works, lest it should become wearisome. And in this manner have been
published, among other plates, grotesques, ancient temples, cornices,
bases, capitals, and many other suchlike things, with all their
measurements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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