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Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level D , Case EO, Shelf 123

Print

1532-1553 (published)
Artist/Maker
Perino Del Vaga (designer)
Master of the Die (engraver)
Salamanca, Antonio (publisher)
Place of origin
Rome (published)

This print combines many of the motifs found in ancient Roman art and design. One of the most important of these is the stylised scrolling foliage of the acanthus plant with its characteristically spiky-edged leaves. Also crammed into this fantastical composition are a strange creature, half-woman, half-plant; cherubs; cornucopias (horns of plenty); military standards; and at the centre, a two-handled vase. The arrangement is more or less symmetrical about a vertical line up the centre of the print but the left half and the right half do not match each other exactly. For example, of the two women seated at the top we see the front of one and the back of the other. One of the women grasps a snake but the other does not.

This type of composition combining human, natural and ornamental elements often with curious relations of scale, in a way that could never exist in real life, is known as grotesque. The name grotesque is derived from the decoration of the emperor Nero’s palace in Rome which was excavated in the decades around 1500.


Object details

Categories
Prints
Ornament Prints
Object type
Print
Materials and techniques
Engraving on paper
Printing Ink
Paper
Engraving
Brief description
Master of the Die after Perino del Vaga, Reissued plates (3) from a set of six panels of ornament. Italian, Rome, 1532-53.
Physical description
Plate 3. Panel of ornament. at the bottom, a female nude holding a large vase on her head. The female nude terminates in scrolling foliage, on which six cupids are seated. At the centre top, two seated female figures each holding a snake.
Dimensions
  • Cut to height: 22.5cm
  • Cut to width: 15cm
Style
Renaissance
Marks and inscriptions
  • Il poeta e'l pittor vanno di pare Et tira il lor adire tutto ad un segno Si come espresso in questo carte appare Fregiate d'opere et d'artificio degno Di questo Roma ci puo essempio dare Roma ricetto d'ogni chiaro ingegno Da le cui grotte ove mai non soggiorna Hor tanta luce a si bella arte torna (Poem in Italian engraved below the image, translation by E.H.Gombrich.)
    Translation
    Poet and Painter as companions meet Because their strivings have a common passion As you can see expressed in this sheet Adorned with friezes in this skilful fashion. Of, this, Rome can the best examples give, Rome towards which all subtle minds are heading Whence now from grottoes where no people live So much new light on this fine art is spreading.
  • Dated 1532 and lettered Ant. Sal. exc
Object history
From Miller (1999), p. 85:
Bartsch called these prints 'after Raphael', but in 1966 Konrad Oberhuber attributed them to Perino del Vaga on the basis of a drawings for plate 2 in the Uffizi (Oberhuber, pl. 36). The plate numbering follows Bartsch.

Historical significance: This print comes from a set of six plates. A drawing for one of the other plates attributed to Perino del Vaga survives in the Uffizi. The two verses of Italian poetry make an explicit connection between the image and the excavation of underground rooms in Rome.
Production
Reissue
Subjects depicted
Acanthus
Putti
Vases
Mask
Festoons
Standards (Identifying Artifacts)
Place depicted
Rome
Summary
This print combines many of the motifs found in ancient Roman art and design. One of the most important of these is the stylised scrolling foliage of the acanthus plant with its characteristically spiky-edged leaves. Also crammed into this fantastical composition are a strange creature, half-woman, half-plant; cherubs; cornucopias (horns of plenty); military standards; and at the centre, a two-handled vase. The arrangement is more or less symmetrical about a vertical line up the centre of the print but the left half and the right half do not match each other exactly. For example, of the two women seated at the top we see the front of one and the back of the other. One of the women grasps a snake but the other does not.

This type of composition combining human, natural and ornamental elements often with curious relations of scale, in a way that could never exist in real life, is known as grotesque. The name grotesque is derived from the decoration of the emperor Nero’s palace in Rome which was excavated in the decades around 1500.
Bibliographic references
  • Miller, Elizabeth. 16th century Italian ornament prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1999. pp.85-87, cat 28b, plate 3, with reference to other literature.
  • Bartsch, A., Le Peintre-Graveur, 21 vols, Vienna, 1803-21, vol. XV, 82.
  • Guilmard, D., Les Maîtres Ornemanistes, Paris, 1880-1881, p. 287, no. 18.
  • Berlin, Katalog der Ornamentstich-Sammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Berlin and Leipzig, 1939, 530.
  • Ornament and Architecture: Renaissance Drawings, Prints and Books, Exhibition Catalogue, Brown University, Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Providence, Rhode Island, 1980, 60.
  • Byrne, J.S., Renaissance Ornament Prints and Drawings, Metropolitan Museum of art, New York, 1981, 45.
  • González de Zárate, J.M., Real Colección de Estampas de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 10 vols, Vitoria-Gastiez, 1992-5, vol. VII, 34. (2987).
  • Berliner, R. and Egger, G., Ornamentale Vorlageblätter des 15. bis 19. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols, Munich, 1981, 265.
  • Snodin Michael, Howard Maurice, Ornament. A social History Since 1450, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1996, 38.
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.1384-1897

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Record createdNovember 16, 2006
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O129241/print-perino-del-vaga/
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