Andrea Andreani | Bathing Nymphs 1605 (after Parmigianino)
Original ink drawing in the Uffizi collection, Florence
The First printing of the woodcut by Ugo De Carpi c1526-27
Bathing Nymphs | 1605
Andrea Andreani (1558-1629)
Chiaroscuro woodcut on tinted paper, printed from three blocks.
29.1 x 19.7 cm
Signed in the block with a monogram lower left Dated 1605.
'This print, was originally a collaboration between artists Parmigianino and the self proclaimed inventor of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique ‘Ugo De Carpi.
The original drawing is housed in the Uffizi collection in Florence and thought to have been drawn c 1526-27.
The first woodcut that was based on this drawing was printed by Ugo De Carpi shortly after.
By the late 16th century, Andrea Andreani had acquired many of his predecessors blocks and began altering and re-printing them. often he would remove the original artists name and assign his own monogram to the prints to mark his ownership of the blocks.
This work is monogramed and dated 1605 on the lower left corner. It represents one of the works that Andreani had acquired the blocks for and reprinted as his own.
A beautiful rare piece of renaissance printmaking.
$4,400
Andrea Andreani
(born: Mantua 1558-9 - died 1629)
Andreani was the most prolific cutter and printer of chiaroscuro woodcuts in Italy in the later sixteenth century. he is documented in Florence in 1584 and in Sienna from 1586, but by 1593 was active in his native city of Mantua.
One work by him, a copy after Titian’s The Triumph of Faith, was published in Rome. Along with drawings by Jacopo Ligozzi, Raffaellino de Reggio.
Andreani’s Oeuvre includes many large prints comprising several sheets, whilst some of his most enterprising works, notably his copies of drawings based on Andrea Mantegna’s cartoons for the Triumphs of Caesar required more than 40 blocks.
Perhaps owing to a lack of commissions, from 1602- 1610, Andreani also re printed and re cut woodblocks from Ugo De Carpi, Antonio da Trento and Niccolo Vicentino dating from decades earlier.
