ANDREA MELDOLLA, IL SCHIAVONE Minerva and the Muses.

ANDREA MELDOLLA, IL SCHIAVONE
Minerva and the Muses.

Etching, circa 1540. 238x172 mm; 9⅜x6¾ inches. Trimmed on the plate mark. A good impression of this extremely scarce, early etching.

Provenance: Dr. Julius Hofmann, Vienna, with the ink stamp verso (Lugt 1264).

Meldolla (circa 1510/15-1563) was an Italian Renaissance painter and etcher, born in Dalmatia, in the Republic of Venice (present-day Croatia) to parents from Emilia-Romagna, and he was active mainly in the city of Venice. Although initially much influenced by Parmigianino and Italian Mannerism, as the current etching illuminates, he was also informed by Venetian painting, and ultimately combined both in his works. Meldolla in turn influenced Titian, Tintoretto, and Jacopo Bassano among others.

Francis E. Richardson, who wrote the definitive Andrea Schiavone, New York, 1980, noted Meldolla's importance as an etcher: "In etching he was similarly innovative. His technique was unlike that of any contemporary: unsystematically he used dense webs of light, fine, multidirectional hatching to create a tonal continuum embracing form, light, shadow, and air. His etchings are the only real equivalent in printmaking of later 16th-century Venetian painting modes, and his technical experiments were emulated by 17th-century etchers such as Jacques Bellange, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and Rembrandt." Bartsch 79.