Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Renaissance Artists Working "After"

Antonio da Trento after Parmigianino
Pallas Athena
ca. 1520-50
chiaroscuro woodcut
British Museum

Antonio Salamanca after Parmigianino
Prophet Aaron in niche
before 1562
engraving
British Museum

"The word 'style' derives from Latin stilus, the writing instrument of the Romans. It could be used to characterize an author's manner of writing, although the more frequent term for literary style was genus dicendi, 'mode of speech'.  The writings of Greek and Roman teachers of rhetoric still provide the most subtle analysis ever attempted of the various potentialities and categories of style.  The effect of words depends on the right choice of the noble or humble term, with all the social and psychological connotations that go with these stratifications.  Equal attention should be paid to the flavor of archaic or current usages.  Either usage can be correct if the topic so demands it. This is the doctrine of decorum, of the appropriateness of style to the occasion.  To use the grand manner for trivial subjects is as ridiculous as to use colloquialisms for solemn occasions.  Oratory, in this view, is a skill that slowly developed until it could be used with assurance to sway the jury.  But corruption lurks close to perfection.  An overdose of effects produces a hollow and affected style that lacks virility.  Only a constant study of the greatest models of style (the 'classical' authors) will preserve the style pure. These doctrines, which also have an application to music, architecture, and the visual arts, form the foundation of critical theory up to the eighteenth century."

 from an article on Style by Ernst Gombrich, originally published in the International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1968)

Giulio Bonasone after Parmigianino
Mercury presenting panpipes to Minerva
ca. 1524-30
engraving
British Museum

Andrea Schiavone after Parmigianino
Minerva and the Muses
before 1563
etching
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Andrea Schiavone after Parmigianino
Holy Family with Angel
before 1563
etching
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Marcantonio after Raphael
Cupid, Venus and Athena
ca. 1510-20
engraving
British Museum

Marcantonio after Raphael
Apollo in niche
ca. 1511-1520
engraving
British Museum

Agostino Veneziano after Raphael
Young Roman at an altar
ca. 1515-30
engraving
British Museum

Adriaen Collaert after Johannes Stradanus
Judgment of Paris
ca. 1587
engraving
British Museum

Virgil Solis after Jacopo Caraglio
Ceres
before 1562
engraving
British Museum

René Boyvin after Rosso Fiorentino
Nymph of Fontainebleau
ca. 1545-55
engraving
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anonymous artist after Michelangelo
Dead Christ from Pietà
16th century
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor 

Federico Zuccaro after Michelangelo
Statue of Dawn in Medici Chapel
1590s
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Michelangelo after Giotto
Study of draped bending woman
ca. 1524-34
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem