SCHOOL OF LEONARDO DA VINCI. PROFILE BUST OF A
YOUNG WOMAN
Size of the original engraving, 4⅛ × 3 inches
In the British Museum
NICOLETTO ROSEX DA MODENA. ORPHEUS
Size of the original engraving, 9⅞ × 6¾ inches
In the British Museum
The group of trees in the Fate of the Evil Tongue is borrowed from Dürer’s print of Hercules, while the Turkish Family and the Four Naked Women—the last-named being dated 1500—are copies of Dürer’s engravings. Vedriani, writing of Nicoletto as a painter, speaks of him as “chiefly distinguished in perspective,” and among the most charming of his plates in which this quality is seen is Orpheus. The bare tree is suggestive of Martin Schongauer, while the birds and beasts, including a dog, a peacock, a weasel, a monkey playing with a tortoise, a squirrel, a snake, a piping bird, two rabbits, a fox, and a stag, not to speak of the ducks and swans in the water, though not copied from northern originals, have all the charm and life-like quality which we find in the work of German engravers such as The Master of St. John the Baptist and The Master E. S. of 1466.
Concerning Jacopo de’ Barbari there is a wealth of biographical material, in contrast with the meagerness of our knowledge concerning the earlier Italian engravers. Born at Venice, between 1440 and 1450, he is known to have worked between 1500 and 1508 for the Emperor and various other princes in different towns of Germany. He was at Nuremberg in 1505, and in 1510 he was in the service of the Archduchess Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, while, in the inventory of the Regent’s pictures of 1515-1516, he is referred to as dead.
Not one of the thirty engravings by Jacopo is signed with his name, initials, or any form of monogram, nor does any of them bear a date. His emblem is the caduceus, which appears on the greater number of his prints; and those upon which it is lacking can readily be identified by his individual style. This style undergoes certain modifications with the passing years. In the early period, the shading, for the most part, is in parallel lines, which follow the contour of the figure, the figure itself being long and sinuous. In his middle and later period he indulged more freely in cross-hatching, and the faces are modelled with greater delicacy.
Stress has been laid upon the influence exerted by Jacopo upon Dürer’s engraving; but with the exception of the Apollo and Diana this influence is theoretical rather than artistic. Dürer, in one of the manuscript sketches, dated 1523, for his book The Theory of Human Proportions, writes: “Howbeit, I can find none such who hath written aught about how to form a canon of human proportion, save one man—Jacopo by name, born at Venice, and a charming painter. He showed me the figures of a man and a woman, which he had drawn according to a canon of proportions, so that, at that time, I would rather have seen what he meant than be shown a new kingdom.... Then, however, I was still young and had not heard of such things before. Howbeit, I was very fond of art, so I set myself to discover how such a canon might be wrought out.” Dürer undoubtedly refers to the period of his first visit to Venice, and it is, accordingly, in Dürer’s earliest plates that we see most clearly the influence of the older master on his technical method. Dürer soon outstripped Jacopo in everything that pertains to the technical side of engraving and worked out for himself a method which, for his purpose, was substantially perfect.