• Title : Petrus Arretinus Acerrimus Virtutum Ac Vitiorum Demostrator
• Size: 13 1/2in x 9 1/2in (345mm x 240mm)
• Condition: (A+) Fine Condition
• Date : 1870
• Ref #:  22442

Description:
This fine, original antique wood-cut print of the Italian playwright and poet Pietro Aretino by Marcantonio Raimondi in the early 16th century was faithfully re-engraved and published by Charles Amand-Durand in 1870.
These beautiful re-engravings of classic and historical wood-cuts were painstakingly re-issued by Amand-Durand in Paris in the mid to late 19th century. Such is the quality of his re-strikes that Durands prints are now in major institutional collections such a the Louvre, National Gallery, The Met and many other famous Galleries. Please see below for further background on Amand-Durand.

General Definitions:
Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable
Paper color : - off white
Age of map color: -
Colors used: -
General color appearance: -
Paper size: - 14in x 9 1/2in (350mm x 240mm)
Plate size: - 8in x 6in (205mm x 1530mm)
Margins: - Min 1in (25mm)

Imperfections:
Margins: - None
Plate area: - None
Verso: - None

Background: 
Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio 1470-1482 was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important print-maker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print. He also systematized a technique of engraving that became dominant in Italy and elsewhere. His collaboration with Raphael greatly helped his career, and he continued to exploit Raphael\'s works after the painter\'s death in 1520, playing a large part in spreading High Renaissance styles across Europe. Much of the biographical information we have comes from his life, the only one of a printmaker, in Vasaris Lives of the Artists.
About this time he began to make copies of Dürers woodcut series, the Life of the Virgin. This was extremely common practice, although normally engravers copied other expensive engravings rather than the cheaper woodcuts. However Dürers woodcuts had raised the standard of the medium considerably, and since Marcantonio continued to copy a large number of both Dürers engravings and woodcuts, he must have found it profitable.
His early copies included Dürers famous AD monogram, and Dürer made a complaint to the Venetian Government, which won him some legal protection for his monogram, but not his compositions, in Venetian territory - an important case in the slowly evolving history of intellectual property law.
Marcantonio appears to have spent some of the last half of the decade in Venice, but no dates are known.
The Massacre of the Innocents, designed by Raphael to be engraved.
He is attributed with around 300 engravings. After years of great success, his career ran into trouble in the mid-1520s; he was imprisoned for a time in Rome over his role in the series of erotic prints I Modi, and then, according to Vasari, lost all his money in the Sack of Rome in 1527, after which none of his work can be securely dated.

Pietro Aretino 1492 – 1556 was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics and developed modern literary pornography.