Marcantonio Raimondi
Italian, c. 1470/1482 - c. 1527/34
Marcantonio Raimondi was a pupil of Raibolini, who taught him the niello technique. In 1505, he had already engraved his illustration of Pyramus and Thisbe and travelled in northern Italy, visiting Venice, where he was employed from 1508 to 1510 in copying works by Dürer. He reproduced 17 illustrations from Dürer's woodcut series The Life of the Virgin, and 37 from the Small Passion series, and also made a copy of Dürer's fine print of Adam and Eve. These copies, bearing he mark of the Nuremberg master, were sold as originals. This fraud resulted in legal proceedings: Marcantonio was found guilty by the Venetian court and ordered to add his mark to that of the original author. Around 1510, in Florence, Raimondi engraved his famous reproduction of Michelangelo's Pisan War. He then went to Rome, where, after making further reproductions of Dürer's work, he found his true calling in attaching himself to Raphael.
In the eight or nine years he spent reproducing Raphael's masterpieces, Raimondi developed his talent to the full. He first worked with Raphael, then rented a workshop where his best pupils, Marco Dente da Rovena and Agostino di Musi, received their training. After Raphael's death in 1520, Marcantonio made reproductions of the work of Giulio Romano. However, his engravings of Romano's illustrations to Pietro Aretino's sonnets aroused the anger of Pope Clement VII, who had the engraver imprisoned on the grounds of obscenity. Released following the interventions of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici and the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, Raimondi then quarrelled seriously with the latter over an engraving he had made of Bandinelli's Martyrdom of St Lawrence. The sacking of Rome in 1527 resulted in Raimondi's ruin, when he was obliged to pay a heavy ransom to the Spaniards who had taken the city. He fled to Bologna and no more was heard of him. He probably did not long survive this disaster.
Critics divide Marcantonio's works into four categories: the engravings he made under the influence of Raibolini; his reproductions of Dürer; the prints he made under the influence and guidance of Raphael, which are regarded as his real masterpieces; and the works he produced between 1520 and his death, which no longer display the same rigorous draughtsmanship and painstaking execution.
"RAIMONDI, Marcantonio." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00148364 (accessed April 12, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
German, c. 1482 - 1539/40
