Giulio Bonasone

He worked mainly in Mantua, Rome and Venice and with great success, producing etchings and engravings after the old masters and his own designs.

His engravings after other artists' designs can be categorized into two groups: those that closely replicate the original work, such as the Creation of Eve after Michelangelo, and those incorporating changes at Bonasone's will, such as Clelia Crossing the Tiber after Polidoro.

[1] In fact, Bonasone's technique of tight systems of lines precisely captured both the forms and the contrast in light in Romano's work.

These paintings display uniform, short, curved, hatching marks employed to delineate human bodies.

Given the accuracy of his works in translating the paintings, one could reasonably guess that Bonasone moved to Rome for an extended period of time instead of paying short visits occasionally.

Prints that illustrate this technique mostly clearly are those done after Michelangelo, such as the Creation of Eve, Judith and Holofernes, and Clelia Crossing the Tiber after Polidoro da Caravaggio.

[1] When Bonasone produced prints after Roman frescos, he demonstrated astonishing capabilities to understand and represent the colour and the taste of masterpieces.

In fact, the brightness and colour scheme are more similar to Bonasone's works of the 1560s than those of the 1530s or 1540s, and the composition is more advanced than what the artist was capable of during his early stage.

He used small flicks achieve tonal gradation, the technique of transiting one colour hue to another, and a tangible sense of form.

For instance, in his print after Raphael's The Pietà Near the Cave, Bonasone successfully portrayed the Madonna's sorrow with his new technique, a great breakthrough since the 1540s.

While Bonasone's earlier engravings reflected his weakness in representing landscapes in that medium, his pure etchings revealed his lack of confidence in dealing with figures.

Overall, this style bore similarities with some works by Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio and the usual technique of the Dutch artist Cornelius Cort.

In Bonasone's original design, the Incarnarion, one would find the composition properly conceived but the technique distinct from that of the Judgement of Paris.

However, he probably returned to Rome to work on prints such Raphael's as Qua Vadis, the Virgin and Child with a Bird, and Michelangelo's Nude Carrying the Cross.

[1] Bonasone's Judith with the Head of Holofernes, though containing many different details compared to Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel, is still similar to the original work in its form.

The artist employed the trick of highlighting the contrast between light and dark, as he did for the Creation of Eve, to achieve the visual impact of coloured painting.

Even with the large scale that engraving could possibly achieve, each individual figure in the painting had to be shrunk to a tiny size.

Similar problems are observed in Bonasone's other small-scaled prints such as the Juno series, The Passion of Christ, and the Bocchi illustrations.

When he engraved after Parmigianino's The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine, he produced a composition that was very similar to the source except that he took away the window and elongated the entire work in order to lengthen the man in the lower right corner.

In fact, most of his works after Titian was produced in the 1560s, when his main technique was combining etching and engraving to represent the background and foreground respectively.

[1] As one of the best reproductive engravings of Giulio Bonasone, this print is believed to be taken directly from an original sarcophagus relief in the Villa Medici in Rome.

[14] When the original relief was broken on the left and upper part, Bonasone has attempted to complete the design by changing the spatial relationship.

Edgar Wind noticed a "touch of archaeological flatness in incidental parts of the engraving", commented that "Mars is designed with extraordinary power as the figure dominating the composition.

Indeed the character is so well conceived, in his insidious readiness to release disaster, looking back at Venus while going off to war, that one wonders whether Bonasone did not have some sketch by Raphael to work on.

"[15] Since no evidence suggests the possession by Bonasone of any sketch by Raphael, this engraving actually seems to be the best representation of Giulio's use of mixed media to demonstrate the co-existence of power and beauty.

[17] It might be explained by the theory that Vasari had believed that Bonasone worked out of Venice, since he discussed Venetian woodcuts after talking about Giulio's prints.

Though he considered Bonasone inferior to Raimondi, or even to Martino Rota and Agostino Veneziano, he still recommended him to his audience "for his knowledge of all the best manners; also the best works of the best masters; for his universal erudition; for the vast invention that we find in a;; his prints.

"[18] He mentioned the letter of one of the members of Marini family to his agent Ciotti in which Marini asked the latter to get hime some "good old prints of Giulio Bonasone, Marc Antonion or other great masters..."[18] He also quoted a letter from Count Fortunato which says "Use a little diligence to find some of the good prints of the able masters, such as Marc Antonio, Martino Rota, Giulio Bonasone, etc.

[20] It is possible that Malvasia made a mistake about the relationship between the two artists but he still established the fact that Bonasone was a painter on top of his career as an engraver.

[1] Mary Pittaluga was the first twentieth-century art historian who conducted a valuable study of sixteenth-century Italian printmaking.