Post #3 Research Project: Raphael and Marcantonio Raimondi: the Collaboration, the Signature

Raphael and Marcantonio Raimondi: the Collaboration, the Signature

       “Marcantonio Raimondi's great collaboration with Raphael took place not in Venice, but in Rome around 1510” (Pon, 67). Looking at prints attributed to “Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael” it is important to note the “and” which indicates collaboration between the two artists, while a print described as “Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael” means not under collaboration, due to the use of the word “after”.

        In the sixteenth century, “signatures on paintings began to signify the authorial painter or sculptor alone, rather than being commercial signs of the author of the workshop as a whole” (Pon, 68). In sixteenth century printmaking, often one will see the signatures of the artist, printmaker, and publisher of the artwork. This plethora of signatures causes confusion in the modern world as to whom the artwork should really be attributed to. Is the print done in collaboration with the artist? Or is the print after the artist?

       Baviero Carocci, or “il Baviera” was an assistant to Raphael in his workshop and would later own Raphael's engraved plates. As Lisa Pon describes, Raphael did not necessarily “sign” all of his engraved plates that are attributed to him: 

         “Raphael's own name did appear on his most important prints, and as the person designated to 

         look after the printing, il Baviera would have been authorized to sign Raphael's name, even if

         he (Raphael) did not sign his own, on the engraved plates for them. In other words, the printed 

        signatures on the plates engraved in Raphael's workshop, Raphael's authorial signature on these 

        prints, may have been signed by the proxy he chose for his legal signature” (73).

The signature in these prints is also quite different than how the contemporary print world handles the artist's signature today. Raphael's signature is actually engraved into the surface of the copper plate, and (most notably) this mark is not by him (he was never trained in engraving). Contemporary printmakers sign the actual print with a pencil, this marks the print as an original and by the artist. This pencil signature on every print, on all editions, came out of the necessity of the art world to define the original. It is harder to reproduce a signature every time in pencil on an edition of 100 prints than it would be to engrave the artist's name into the plate and have the signature look the same every single time. Stated earlier, it is because of this engraved signature into the plate/artwork, and not a “real signature” that there is controversy about what prints are actually under the artist's (like Raphael) real influence.

        Marcantonio Raimondi either had “little to do with Raphael on a professional level” or “worked entirely under Raphael's influence, if not in the painter's studio, then in the print shop set up by Raphael and run by il Baviera” (Pon, 83). There is no existing documentation of either circumstances. Either way, Marcantonio made “some fifty prints from Raphael's designs” (Pon, 83). It should be noted that Marcantonio “in the course of his career made more than one hundred and sixty prints on his own, and another 45 or so after the antique” (Pon, 83).

       “Raphael most surely never worked on the plates for the prints made by Marcantonio, since the painter had no training in cutting into the copper with a burin, a task physically unlike drawing or painting” (Pon, 85). Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael's engravings “bore inscriptions naming both the painter and the engraver” (Pon, 85). Their collaboration consisted of Marcantonio translating Raphael's drawings into prints. This is somewhat different than other copyists at the time, who were translating finished artwork, like paintings and frescoes, into prints.

       In “Parnassus” the engraving from 1517, many differences can been seen between the print and the original painting. These differences have been explained by interpreting Marcantonio's engraving as a “reconstruction of a lost Raphael drawing” (Pon, 87). Marcantonio's Parnassus has the words “Raphael depicted this in the Vatican” at the bottom of the print which (Pon, 93). Marcantonio Raimondi withholds his M.A.F. or M.A. Signature from Parnassus. The “engraving recalled an early composition [of Raphael's], one devoid of the compromises, that had been dictated by the physical presence of the window and which were therefore unnecessary in the print” (Pon, 94). “As a result the print was not a reproduction of the fresco, but a new outlet for Raphael's creative energies via the process of collaboration in the medium of engraving” (Pon, 94).

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, Parnassus, Engraving 1517

Raphael, Parnassus, Fresco. Stanza della Segnatura, Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums 1511

These differences may not have been as problematic in the 1500's as they are to us now. Completely reproductive prints, after original paintings or photos, that duplicated every single aspect exactly was
not a standard of printmakers working under/with artists until the nineteenth century (Pon, 88).

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, Mercury Descending from the Sky, Engraving 1517

Raphael, Mercury Descending from the Sky, Fresco. Loggia of Psyche, Villa Farnesina, Rome

Bibliography:

Pon, Lisa. Raphael, Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Renaissance Print. China: 

     Yale University Press, 2004. Print