Size of the original engraving, 10¼ × 6⅛ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
MARCANTONIO RAIMONDI. DEATH OF LUCRETIA
Size of the original engraving, 8½ × 5¼ inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
To this early period likewise belongs Pyramus and Thisbe, which bears the earliest date—1505—which we find upon any of his engravings. It may well have been executed during his residence in Venice, between 1505 and 1509.
The Bathers, of 1510, is an artistic record of Marcantonio’s visit to Florence, on his way to Rome. The figures are taken from Michelangelo’s cartoon of the Battle of Pisa; but the landscape, including the thatched barn to the right, is a faithful copy, in reverse, of Lucas van Leyden’s plate of Mahomet and the Monk Sergius; for Marcantonio, like all great artists, freely borrowed his material wherever he found it, shaping it to his own ends.
According to Vasari, it was the Death of Lucretia, engraved shortly after Marcantonio’s arrival in Rome, about 1510, after a drawing by Raphael, which attracted the attention of that master and showed him how much he might benefit by the reproduction of his work. One would be inclined to think that the Death of Dido rather than the Death of Lucretia might have been the means of bringing about this artistic collaboration; for, if Vasari is correct, the immediate result of Raphael’s personal influence upon Marcantonio was harmful rather than helpful, the Lucretia by general consent being the finer plate of the two.
It is significant that none of Marcantonio’s engravings interprets any existing painting by Raphael. We may infer that the engraver worked entirely after drawings supplied to him by Raphael—either drawings made for the purpose of being interpreted in terms of engraving, or the original studies for paintings, which, in their elaboration, were subjected to many modifications and changes.
Among his most interesting engravings are Saint Cecilia, which may be compared, or rather contrasted, with the famous painting in Bologna; the Virgin and Child in the Clouds, which later appears as the Madonna di Foligno; and Poetry, based on a study by Raphael for the fresco in the Camera della Segnatura, in the Vatican.
The Massacre of the Innocents, usually accounted the engraver’s masterpiece, is one of several subjects of which two plates exist. Authorities disagree as to which is the “original,” but some familiarity with both versions leads one to think that Marcantonio may well have been his own interpreter. At least one cannot name certainly any other engraver capable of producing either of the two versions of the Massacre of the Innocents, in point of drawing or of technique.