Bette Talvacchia: Marcantonio Raimondi's Technique, Raphael's Enterprise and the Business of Printmaking

The prints produced by Marcantonio Raimondi in the early 16th century were the most technically accomplished in Italy. When the engraver began to collaborate with Raphael in Rome, his work further developed the idiom of the "modern style", anchored in the idealized human form and linked to paradigms of classical sculpture. The talk will explore the elements that contributed to Marcantonio's eminence in Raphael’s organization. It will analyze the two artists' combined strategies and sources for developing printmaking into a high-profile medium that found innovative uses for drawing, with rich commercial potential. The differences between Marcantonio's achievement and reception in his own time, and Vasari's later account in the 'Vite' will be considered in relation to modern understanding of the artist and his medium.

Bette Talvacchia is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut. She has been a Fellow at Villa I Tatti; The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington; and at the Metropolitan Museum. Dr Talvacchia was also Robert Lehman Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti, and is Visiting Professor at the Institute at Palazzo Rucellai in Florence during the spring semester of 2009. Her publications include a range of topics in 16th- century Italian art and culture, and the books 'Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture' (Princeton University Press, 1999) and Raphael (Phaidon Press, 2007).