Marcantonio Raimondi

Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio (c. 1470-1482 – c. 1534), was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print. He also systematized a technique of engraving that became dominant in Italy and elsewhere. His collaboration with Raphael greatly helped his career, and he continued to exploit Raphael's works after the painter's death in 1520, playing a large part in spreading High Renaissance styles across Europe. Much of the biographical information we have comes from his life, the only one of a printmaker, in Vasari's Lives of the Artists.

He is attributed with around 300 engravings. After years of great success, his career ran into trouble in the mid-1520s; he was imprisoned for a time in Rome over his role in the series of erotic prints I Modi, and then, according to Vasari, lost all his money in the Sack of Rome in 1527, after which none of his work can be securely dated.

Marcantonio's date of birth is unknown, but was by 1482 at the latest. He was possibly born in Argine, near Bologna, Italy, where he is assumed to have grown up. He trained in the workshop of the leading goldsmith and painter in Bologna, Francesco Francia. Vasari claimed that Marcantonio quickly demonstrated more aptitude than Francia, and started designing and producing fashionable waist-buckles (among other items) in niello (engraved metal which is filled in with alloy in a contrasting colour). This is doubted, however, by Arthur Mayger Hind, who sees no evidence of a background in niello technique in his early engravings.

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