JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. APOLLO AND DIANA
Size of the original engraving, 5¾ × 3⅞ inches.
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
JACOPO DE’ BARBARI. ST. CATHERINE
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4⅝ inches
In the British Museum
In such plates as Judith and St. Catherine, Jacopo’s love for long, flowing lines finds its fullest expression. There is a grace about these single figures which is not without appealing charm, though obviously they leave something to be desired on the score of solidity and structure.
Girolamo Mocetto, born in Murano before 1458, was living at Venice in 1514, where he died after 1531. According to Vasari, Mocetto was, at some time, an assistant to Giovanni Bellini, whose influence may be traced in his work. His engravings are unpleasing in style and often clumsy in draughtsmanship. He owes such merit as he may possess to the originals which he interpreted. There is a compelling power in Judith, after Mantegna’s design, which atones for even so shapeless a member as Judith’s right hand. The grandeur of the plate is, however, derived from Mantegna. Mocetto has done little more than traduce it; but, even so, the engraving is noteworthy, inasmuch as it preserves for us a noble composition, of which otherwise we might remain in ignorance. The Baptism of Christ is adapted, with some modifications, from Giovanni Bellini’s painting executed between 1500 and 1510. In the engraving, the landscape, which differs radically from that in Bellini’s painting, may possibly be original with Mocetto, though it recalls the work of Cima, whose Baptism, in S. Giovanni in Bragora, Venice, was painted in 1494.
Benedetto Montagna was, like Mocetto, painter as well as engraver. His earliest engravings are executed in a large, open manner, which can be seen to advantage in the Sacrifice of Abraham. The outline is strongly defined and the shading chiefly in parallel lines. Where cross-hatching is used, it is laid generally at right angles. Later, Montagna modifies his style and adopts the finer system of cross-hatching perfected by Dürer, whose influence, especially in the backgrounds, is clearly to be traced, and whose Nativity, of the year 1504, Montagna copied in reverse. St. Jerome Beneath an Arch of Rock belongs to this later period, and the plate is probably based upon a painting by Bartolommeo Montagna, the engraver’s father.
Giulio Campagnola, born at Padua about 1482, is known to have been working in Venice in 1507 and is assumed to have died shortly after 1514. According to contemporary accounts, he was a youth of marvellously precocious and varied gifts and promise. To his musical and literary accomplishments, he added those of painter, miniaturist, engraver, and sculptor.