Antonio Fantuzzi

Antonio Fantuzzi (active in the 1540s) was an Italian painter and printmaker active in the French Renaissance in a Mannerist style. All that is known about his early life is that he was born in Bologna, from the accounts at Fontainebleau and one inscription on a print (see illustration).

He is recorded as a painter of the First School of Fontainebleau from 1537 into the 1540s, at first on "modest wages", but from 1540 better paid, and apparently a principal assistant to Francesco Primaticcio, who had taken charge of the "school" decorating the Palace of Fontainebleau after the suicide in 1540 of Rosso Fiorentino. Primaticcio was also Bolognese, and may well have summoned Fantuzzi to France in 1537, although he may well have only completed his training in France. He became a leading member of the printmaking workshop at Fontainebleau and nearly 100 etchings survive, 16 dated between 1542 and 1545. Most copy designs by Rosso (about 25), Giulio Romano (21 at least), or Primaticcio. He is last recorded at Fontainebleau in 1550.

In the past, art historians often confused him with Antonio da Trento, another north Italian at Fontainebleau, but the two identities have now been securely disentangled by Henri Zerner; da Trento specialized in chiaroscuro woodcuts, a technique also used by Fantuzzi, and used to be assigned Fantuzzi's prints, partly because their monograms are similar.

No identifiable painting or drawing by him survives; his first task at Fontainebleau was helping with the room over the "Porte Dorée", and after 1540 the "Gallery of Ulysses". Neither sets of decorations has survived, and Fantuzzi's prints are valuable in recording some of the designs. He is also recorded as being, from 1540, in charge of the supply of designs for decorative elements such as grotesques to the other artists. His prints of ornament designs are "particularly appealing, perhaps because they correspond with his specialty in painting. He seems to have lavished more care and to have had sympathies in these works not usually felt in his figural prints after Rosso". From 1540 his salary increased from seven to twenty livres per month.

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