DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61523#0117
Division III.—Engravings.
113
567. (a) Massacre of the Innocents, after Raphael; <s with the
fir tree.”
(b) The same Composition engraved a second time; “ without
the fir tree.”
Both from the Malcolm collection.
568. (a) St. Cecilia, with SS. Paul, John, Augustine, and Mary-
Magdalene, after Raphael.
(b) Parnassus, after Raphael.
Both from the Malcolm collection.
The above forty-four examples represent in the greatest perfection, as to
quality, impression, and condition, the earlier and more interesting part
of Marcantonio’s career as an engraver, from about 1505 to about 1514.
He was the one engraver south of the Alps who shared to the full, or
almost to the full, the technical accomplishments of Northern artists like
Albert Diirer (whom, at one time of his career, he diligently copied and
counterfeited) and Lucas van Leyden. His training and the genius of
his race prevented him, generally speaking, from crowding his plates, as
those masters did, with imitative detail; but when he chooses to borrow a
landscape from Lucas van Leyden (as in 562 c), he can engrave it as well
as his prototype, and in his own special study, the expression of classic
form by methods of linear work of great purity and precision, without
mechanical trick or over-elaboration, he is unrivalled He was not an
original artist, and rarely or never engraved his own designs. In the
present series we can trace the steps of his career from his earliest period
(553-561), when he worked almost entirely after the designs of Francia or
of scholars of Francia like Timoteo Viti, with an occasional exception like
nos. 555 (d) and 561 (b), which are taken from Venetian models and point
to the period of his stay in Venice. We can then follow his southward
journey in 1510, marked by his stay at Florence and by the execution of
his celebrated plate after Michelangelo’s cartoon of the Soldiers sur-
prised bathing (562 b and c). Thence he goes to Rome, and becomes
immediately and almost exclusively attached to the person and the art of
Raphael. The remaining examples, on mounts 563-568, include the best
of what he engraved after the sketches with which that master furnished
him, from the Dido, by which Raphael’s favour is said to have been first
secured, to the St. Cecilia, after a drawing made for the famous picture
now at Bologna. From the point which is reached in examples like 563
(a) (b) (c), 564 (a> (b) (c), 565 (c) (d), 566 (a), 567 (a), and 568 (a), the
artist’s subsequent renderings of the works of Raphael and his scholars
exhibit nothing but decline in the direction of a cold, empty, and
mannered classicism, without feeling or inspiration.
SIDNEY COLVIN.
113
567. (a) Massacre of the Innocents, after Raphael; <s with the
fir tree.”
(b) The same Composition engraved a second time; “ without
the fir tree.”
Both from the Malcolm collection.
568. (a) St. Cecilia, with SS. Paul, John, Augustine, and Mary-
Magdalene, after Raphael.
(b) Parnassus, after Raphael.
Both from the Malcolm collection.
The above forty-four examples represent in the greatest perfection, as to
quality, impression, and condition, the earlier and more interesting part
of Marcantonio’s career as an engraver, from about 1505 to about 1514.
He was the one engraver south of the Alps who shared to the full, or
almost to the full, the technical accomplishments of Northern artists like
Albert Diirer (whom, at one time of his career, he diligently copied and
counterfeited) and Lucas van Leyden. His training and the genius of
his race prevented him, generally speaking, from crowding his plates, as
those masters did, with imitative detail; but when he chooses to borrow a
landscape from Lucas van Leyden (as in 562 c), he can engrave it as well
as his prototype, and in his own special study, the expression of classic
form by methods of linear work of great purity and precision, without
mechanical trick or over-elaboration, he is unrivalled He was not an
original artist, and rarely or never engraved his own designs. In the
present series we can trace the steps of his career from his earliest period
(553-561), when he worked almost entirely after the designs of Francia or
of scholars of Francia like Timoteo Viti, with an occasional exception like
nos. 555 (d) and 561 (b), which are taken from Venetian models and point
to the period of his stay in Venice. We can then follow his southward
journey in 1510, marked by his stay at Florence and by the execution of
his celebrated plate after Michelangelo’s cartoon of the Soldiers sur-
prised bathing (562 b and c). Thence he goes to Rome, and becomes
immediately and almost exclusively attached to the person and the art of
Raphael. The remaining examples, on mounts 563-568, include the best
of what he engraved after the sketches with which that master furnished
him, from the Dido, by which Raphael’s favour is said to have been first
secured, to the St. Cecilia, after a drawing made for the famous picture
now at Bologna. From the point which is reached in examples like 563
(a) (b) (c), 564 (a> (b) (c), 565 (c) (d), 566 (a), 567 (a), and 568 (a), the
artist’s subsequent renderings of the works of Raphael and his scholars
exhibit nothing but decline in the direction of a cold, empty, and
mannered classicism, without feeling or inspiration.
SIDNEY COLVIN.