Collection Online as of February 3, 2023
The Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul
Chiaroscuro woodcut (in two shades of brown and black)
Support: Cream(3) laid paper
Sheet: 29.6 x 47.9 cm (11 5/8 x 18 7/8 in.); Image: 29.2 x 47.5 cm (11 1/2 x 18 11/16 in.)
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1925.1238
Catalogue raisonné: Bartsch 28 (XII.79)
State: ii/ii
Location
not on view
Description
The workshop of Parmigianino was one of the chief centers of chiaroscuro printmaking in the 1500s. Antonio da Trento, Parmigianino's student in Bologna from 1527 to 1531, made several chiaroscuro prints after his master's drawings. This print, considered da Trento's first collaborative effort with Parmigianino, was based on a drawing executed in Rome between 1524 and 1527 for a potential papal commission.
It shows the imminent beheading of saint Paul, kneeling in the foreground, and the forthcoming crucifixion of Saint Peter, dragged away by his long beard by an executioner. According to tradition, the martyrdom of these two saints was ordered by the Roman Emperor Nero on the same day.
Antonio da Trento
Little is known about Antonio da Trento's life, training, and career. Giorgio Vasari records that Antonio came from Trento. He was Parmigianino's principal collaborator, from whom he learned the technique of chiaroscuro woodcut while working in his Bolognese workshop as a printmaker and painter. Contrary to Vasari's statements, some scholars have proposed that ugo da Carpi instructed Antonio in the chiaroscuro technique in Rome. Antonio's identity was once erroneous conflated with an etcher ad painter from bologna, Antonio Fantuzzi, known to have worked at Fontainebleau in the 1530s-40s.
Parmigianino
Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540), was an Italian Mannerist painter, draftsman, and printmaker. In Parma and upon his arrival in Rome in 1524, he experimented with print to study works by artists he admired, such as Raphael. He fled Rome at the time of its sack in 1527, and he moved to Bologna. There, he began his engagement with chiaroscuro woodcuts, collaborating with Ugo da Carpi and Antonio da Trento. Parmigianino then returned to Parma in 1530.