Giulio Campagnola

Giulio Campagnola (Italian: [ˈdʒuːljo kampaɲˈɲɔːla]; c. 1482 – c. 1515) was an Italian engraver and painter, whose few, rare,[1] prints translated the rich Venetian Renaissance style of oil paintings of Giorgione and the early Titian into the medium of engraving; to further his exercises in gradations of tone, he also invented the stipple technique, where multitudes of tiny dots or dashes allow smooth graduations of tone in the essentially linear technique of engraving; variations on this discovery were to be of huge importance in future printmaking.

His father Girolamo was characterised by A. Hyatt Mayor as "a writer of some note, probably also an amateur artist, who belonged to what would now be called the intelligentsia";[2] letters by him in very good humanist Latin survive.

A letter written by a relative when he was fifteen describes him as a talented poet, singer and lutenist, able to read Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and skilled in painting, engraving and cutting gemstones.

Depicting his experiments with artificial blue pigments in his Chrysopoeia (Venice 1515) Augurello refers to Giulio ("meus Iulius") as the one person who at least is somehow profiting from the vain quest for gold.

[5] After this there is no further record, but an engraving plate that he had left half-finished was completed by his adopted son c. 1517, so he is assumed to have died by then at the latest, probably in Venice.

Fortunately, for those seeking to reconstruct his career, he was in the habit of signing, though not dating, his engravings, often with his full name and Antenoreus, a slightly showy learned reference to the Trojan whom Virgil designated the founder of Padua.

There are drawings related to his prints, and in a similar style to them, but only a handful of these are generally agreed to be by him, with Titian, Giorgione and in one case Mantegna also being brought into contention.

Whilst the chronological sequence of his engravings set out by Arthur M. Hind has been generally accepted, the dating of them remains a subject for discussion.