ITALIAN SCHOOL OF ENGRAVING. 



^eft to tliefe marks, all of which will be found in our 

 Plate II. of monograms of the Ita'Aan Engravers, becaufe 

 they were iifed by other mailers greatly inferior in point of 

 abilities to Penni, and to (late that his engravings are not only 

 executed in a very fpirited ftyie, but alto accurately drawn. 

 He chiefly etched, but at times worked with the graver 

 only.. 



The foUowincr is a lift of his principal works :— " Two 

 Satyrs giving Wine to Bacchus ;" " Leda drawing Arrows 

 from Cupid's Quiver ;" " Sufannah at the Bath furprifed by 

 the Elders," all of which are from Rcffo : but the four fol- 

 lowing are from I'rimaticcio ; " Abraham facrificing Ifaac;" 

 " The Marriage of St. Catherine ;'' " .Tupiter nietamor- 

 phoiing Califto into a Bear ;" and " Penelope at work 

 with her Women," all of which plates are of folio dimcnfions.- 



At the fame period with Penni lived Francifco Marcolini, 

 of Forli, an ingenious engraver on wood, who engraved, 

 printed, and pubhtTied a volume, entitled " Giardino de 

 Penfieri," ornamented with wood cuts after Jof. Salviati. 

 The fubjefts are emblematical and fatirical, and are executed 

 •with confiderable delicacy for that mode of engraving. 

 Marcolini was alfo an architeft of no mean talent. 



Another engraver on wood, Giovanni Niccolo RolTiliani, 

 or Vicenlino, alfo lived at this period, he was of Venice ; 

 of mediocre talent ; engraved a few fubieds after Raphael, 

 and " The Entry of Henry TIL into Venice." 



Battiila Vicentino, fo called like Rofliliani, from his 

 birth-place, has been fometimes miftaken for him. Accord- 

 ing to Vafari, he was born at Venice in the year ijoo, 

 a.id engraved, in conjunftion with Baptift del Moro, fifty 

 fubjefts of landfcapes and ancient edifices, in a firm ai-.d 

 agreeable ityle ; thefe are chiefly of folio dimenfions, and 

 among them are Monte Quirlnalis, the Colifcum, &c. Sec. 



The Ghifi of Mantua, each of whom was fuccefiively termed 

 the Mantuano, were a numerous family of artiils. Jean Bap- 

 tifte, the patriarch of this Mantuan race, was born at the 

 commencement of the lixteenth century, and, according to 

 Vafari, was the difciple of Jnlio Romano, and he was 

 occaUonally painter, tlatuary, architect, and engraver. In 

 the latter art he worked with the graver only, and his ilyle 

 bears refemblance to that of Marc Antonio, when mingled 

 with the work of his pupil Peaz, as in the celebrated print 

 of " Neptune rebuking the Winds," where the Hnes of the 

 fhadows are gradua'ly blended into ftipplcd light. Baptifta 

 underftood the human ligure, but his drawing is mannered, 

 and his effefts deficient in harmony. 



His ufual mark v.ill be four.d in our Plate I. of mono- 

 grams of the Italian School, and his principal engravings are : 

 a large folio, of which the fubjett is a " Naval Combat," 

 from a compof'tion by himfelf, dated IJ^S; fome heads 

 of warriors, hclmcted, in 410. ; " The Holy Virgin fuck- 

 ling the Infant Chrift," in ^to. dated 1530; "David 

 beheading Goliah,' ' in folio, dated 1 540 ; " A Warrior 

 eloping with a Female," probably the Rape of Helen, 1 5-59; 

 "A River God,'' after Lucas Penni, in 4to. ; "Mars, 

 Venus, and Cupid," in folio ; " The Conflagration of 

 Troy," a capital print from his own defign, of large folio 

 dimenfions. 



Georgio Ghifi was born at Mantua A. D. 1)24. He 

 was the nephew, or, as others fay, the fon of Jean Baptifte, 

 whom we have mcmioned above, and appears to have learned 

 from him the rudiments of engraving, though in the 

 progrefs of his ftuaies he much improved the ftyle of his 

 predeceffor. 



Georgio was eminently fuccefsful in the technical and 

 academical parts oi the art : in particular he (ludied the 

 •rstrcmities of lor h'jman figure with much attcction ; and ex- 

 4 



prefled the knitting of the joints and turns of the limbs with 

 confider.-ible accuracy. The knees of his figures efpecially, 

 lie frequently drew in a manner which has been juftly ad- 

 mired. There h, indeed, a famenefs of ftyle in the drawing 

 and marking of his figures, which has made it fufpeded that 

 he always drew from the fame individual model, and thus ob- 

 truded a manner of his own, inllcad of rendering the forms of 

 the great painters after whom he worked in all their variety. 

 This may be the reafon why he has lucceed. d fo indifferently 

 in working from Michael Angclo ; whole forms he to a cer- 

 tain degree c.iricatured : the fwellings of the mufcles being 

 too powerfully cxprelTed, the lights became divided, the 

 maffes confufcd, and the necelfary degrees of loundncl's im- 

 paired in the efl'eft. Thefe faults may be but too obvioufly 

 feen in " Tlse Lall .liidgmciit," engravodafter that celebrated 

 mailer, where the dorfal and abdominal mufeles, as well as 

 thofe of the limbs, are marked in a heavy, affected, and 

 unplealing manner. 



Such defefts as thefe, however, which do not always pre- 

 dominate in the works of Georgio, are often more than 

 counterbalanced by the degrees of' truth and beauty which- 

 are found in them. 



Indifferent impreffions of his prints are by no means^ 

 rare, but Inch as arc finely printed and well preferved ap- 

 pear but feldom, yet without feeing them, it is impoffible 

 to form an adequate idea of the merits of this engraver. 

 His monograms will be found in our Place I. of thofe of 

 the Italian School: and the following are among his molt 

 juftly valued performances. 



" The Myller\- of the Trinity,'' from his own compo- 

 fition ; " Tl'.e Prophets and Sybils" of Mfchael Angelo ; : 

 a fet of fix upright folios from the pictures in the Siftine 

 chapel ; " The Laft Judgment'' of Michael Angelo, a very 

 large upright, arched at the top, engraved on ten or eleven 

 plates The portrait of pope Julius II. after Raphael; and 

 from the fame mafter, " A Holy Family ;' " The School of 

 Athens,'' very large, and "The Difpute of the Sacra- 

 ment.'' 



His print of "The Dream of Raphael" is of doubtful 

 orig-inal, for while fome call it by this name, others term it 

 " Michael Angelo's Melancholy." It is of large folio di- 

 menfions, dated in Ij6l, and reprefents an aged philofo- 

 pher contemplating a fliipwrecked veftel, while a nymph 

 advances towards him : in the back-ground are ftrange and 

 fantailie appearances. Bafan fays that P.aphael had no hand 

 in it, yet the words " Raphaelis uibinatus inventum,'' are 

 affixed to it, and the ftyle of compofition and defign appear 

 to juflify the infcription. 



bf a long 4to. fize are, a female fitting in a boat, 

 to whom an old man is bringing a new-born infant, of 

 anonymous invention ; and a winged female holding a globe. 

 The remainder are in folio, viz. an allegorical print, in 

 compliment to the birth of the- prince of the hou.fe of 

 Gonzague, after Julio Romano ; " Cupid and Plyche 

 crowned by Hymen,'' and " The Birth of Memnon," bot'ti 

 from the fame mafter ; the latter one of the fineft engraving.^ 

 from the hand of Mantuano; " Ccphalus and I'rocrii, " 

 from the fame ; " The Interview between Scipio and Han- 

 nibal, previous to the Battle of Zama ;" " Regulus reviled 

 by the Carthaginians," and " Regulus tnclofed in the 

 Calk," all after the fame mafter ; " Venus at the Forge of 

 Vulcan," is after Perin del Vaga ; " Mars and Venus," 

 after Raphael del Reggio ; " Diana and Endyinion," aftvr 

 I.ueas Penni ; " The Adoration of the Shepherds" is very 

 large, and engraved on two plates, after Angelo Bronziiii ; 

 " The Lall Supper," after Iv. Lombart ; " Herculi's 

 vanquifliing the Hydra of Lcrna," after Bertano Man- 



