Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael Exhibition Guide
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Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael Exhibition Guide Large print version Please return after use Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 1 27/09/2016 13:59 Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 2 27/09/2016 13:59 Introduction Between about 1510 and 1520, Marcantonio Raimondi (c.1480-c.1534) and Raphael (1483-1520) entered into a creative collaboration that gave rise to some of the most famous printed images in western art. For the frst time, an artist of Raphael’s stature turned to a printmaker to spread his innovative designs and style to new audiences. Raphael recognized Marcantonio Raimondi as a master of the new multiple medium of engraving, and Marcantonio brought an unprecedented graphic intelligence to the task of working from Raphael’s designs. Their partnership in the early 16th century changed the way we see art today. Yet Marcantonio’s close working relationship with Raphael is only one facet of his career and its impact. Throughout his life as an engraver Marcantonio made prints from his own designs as well as those of other artists, consistently fashioning innovative images for the new medium of print. Before the invention of printmaking in the mid-1440s, nearly all visual images were singular. Marcantonio was a skilled and radical innovator in the new technology of copperplate engraving – a modern invention only about ffty years old at the time – and he was instrumental in driving a proliferation of images that still reverberates in our own information age. It is worth remembering that all historic art was contemporary art when it was created. Marcantonio’s artform, the print, was arguably more accessible and democratic than any which came before, placing images into the hands of new audiences and challenging conceptions of what constitutes ‘art’. Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 3 27/09/2016 13:59 Marcantonio Raimondi (c.1480-c.1534) Marcantonio Raimondi was probably born around 1480 in Argini, near the university city of Bologna. After establishing himself as an accomplished engraver, he travelled from Bologna to Venice around 1506, moving from a world of humanist scholarship to the heart of Italian publishing. In Venice, he may have been involved in one of the earliest intellectual property disputes in history when he produced unauthorized copies of prints by his famous German contemporary, Albrecht Dürer, although the evidence surrounding this case is ambiguous. Around 1510, after passing through Florence, he moved to Rome, a city long regarded as the centre of western culture and religion. His ambition was to work in close proximity to the most accomplished and successful living artists of his day. He collaborated with Raphael on many engraving and publishing projects until Raphael’s death in 1520. Marcantonio then sometimes worked with Giulio Romano, Raphael’s chief assistant. In 1524 he was sent to prison for several months for making prints after a series of drawings by Giulio of erotic subjects known as I Modi (The Positions). Marcantonio’s misfortunes continued. He is reported to have lost all his possessions in the calamitous Sack of Rome in 1527 and was forced to ransom himself to the mutinous troops of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Reduced almost to the state of a beggar, he is said to have returned to Bologna, where he died around 1534. Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 4 27/09/2016 13:59 1 Bologna and humanism Marcantonio Raimondi’s frst works date from his youth in the university city of Bologna. Little is known about his early life and training with the Bolognese painter, medallist and goldsmith Francesco Raibolini, known as Francia. However, by 1504 Marcantonio was being praised for his accomplishments in engraving by a poet associated with the humanist circles of the city, Giovanni Achillini, whom Marcantonio would later portray as a modern-day Orpheus playing his guitar. Marcantonio’s early drawings and engravings refect his close association with a Bolognese circle of writers and artists who actively collected antiquities and modern works of art and encouraged the careers of local printmakers, often by guiding them with verses and occasionally composing verses on their work. The rapid development of Marcantonio’s technique in these years shows the application and care that he brought to analyzing and absorbing the best in existing prints, especially the recent prints of Albrecht Dürer. Marcantonio’s Apollo, Hyacinth and Amor from 1506, is particularly remarkable for its forthright depiction of homoerotic intimacy. 2 Encounters with Dürer, Giorgione and Michelangelo: Venice, Florence and Rome In 1506, having made his mark as an accomplished engraver in Bologna, Marcantonio Raimondi travelled to Venice, one of the major publishing centres in Europe. The move almost certainly encouraged his commercial ambitions. In Venice he saw Dürer’s Life of the Virgin series of woodcuts for sale and subsequently made engraved copies after the German artist’s designs in partnership with the publishing frm of Niccolò and Domenico dal Jesus. Giorgio Vasari in the second edition of his Lives of the Artists, published more than sixty years later, told contradictory stories about whether Dürer had agreed to Marcantonio producing engraved copies after his work or not. While Marcantonio was based in Venice, the city came under threat from a huge fre in the Arsenale and invasion by forces of the Holy Roman Empire, giving rise to a collective sense of impending disaster. These factors may have inspired one of Marcantonio’s most remarkable engravings, Il Sogno (The Dream of Raphael). After leaving Venice around 1509, Marcantonio appears to have travelled to another important cultural centre, Florence, where he encountered Michelangelo’s Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 5 27/09/2016 13:59 monumental design for The Battle of Cascina. He produced at least two prints demonstrating his interest in Michelangelo’s heroic depiction of the male nude in that work, a theme he revisited in two of the earliest prints after fgures from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. 3 Working with Raphael in Rome Marcantonio Raimondi’s move to Rome demonstrates his ambition to work in close proximity to the greatest living artists of his day and to study celebrated ancient sculptures, many of which had only recently been unearthed. When Marcantonio frst arrived in Rome around 1510, he worked with a slightly older generation of artists including Jacopo Ripanda and Baldassare Peruzzi. Their antiquarian interests matched his own experiences, and they introduced him to important scholars and collectors. Yet, soon Marcantonio entered into a professional relationship with Raphael that would come to defne his career and alter the course of European art. For the frst time, a painter working for a patron as illustrious as the Pope produced designs expressly for the multiple, portable medium of print. Together, Raphael and Marcantonio produced some of the most famous printed images in western art, including The Massacre of the Innocents, Quos Ego, The Plague in Crete (The Morbetto) and The Judgment of Paris. Some of Raphael’s drawings related to these prints are exhibited here alongside Marcantonio’s engravings, allowing unparalleled insight into how Raphael communicated his ideas to the engraver and how the engraver, in turn, translated the artist’s thoughts into print. 4 Antiquity and mythology Prints played a vital role in broadcasting the rediscovery of antiquities. Some of Marcantonio Raimondi’s best-known prints represent celebrated ancient statues, many of which had recently been unearthed or recovered after centuries of neglect. These sculptures were eagerly collected and displayed by important Roman families and by the Pope, fostering a new appreciation for the physical remains of antiquity. Marcantonio’s ‘followers’ – printmakers who put his methods to practice in their own work – also played an important role in disseminating knowledge of antiquities through print. Many of their prints advertise the locations of the antiquities they represent, whether they were on public view or had Marcantonio LARGE PRINT guide A4.indd 6 27/09/2016 13:59 recently been moved into private collections. In some cases, these prints give a sense of setting – a niche, a plinth, a sculpture court or a gallery. In other instances, printmakers appear to enliven their subjects, playing on the life-like properties of ancient sculpture and creating compelling narrative images around them, often based on ancient myths or on important episodes in Roman history. 5 Virtue: antique and Christian Many of Marcantonio Raimondi’s prints played a role in shaping social values, often fusing humanist learning with Christian piety. In addition to the small, coin-like portraits of the Renaissance popes on view, the prints in this section all present us with moral exemplars in the form of beautiful fgures embodying virtue and devotion. While the Seven Virtues transform a cycle of paintings on the façade of a Roman home into a hand-held guide to human conduct, the Reconciliation of Minerva and Cupid visualizes the unifcation of the opposing forces of chastity and love. One of the examples of that print on display is a proof, an unfnished work, which Marcantonio corrected with the pen before completing his engraving. Poetry, based on a fresco Raphael painted for the same room as his famous School of Athens in the Vatican, shows the literary goddess as both recipient and transmitter of divine enlightenment, foating on clouds and bathed in supernatural light. 6 Faith and devotion Marcantonio Raimondi’s prints depicting Christian imagery gathered in this section were made in Rome between c.1512-25, and most of them relate in some way to Raphael or other artists linked to him. However, none of Marcantonio’s engravings here can be considered a straightforward ‘reproduction’ of a design by Raphael or another artist in his circle.