By the beginning of the i6th century we find quite a number of known engravers working in the north of Italy, such as Benedetto Montagna of Vicenza (about 147o to after 1540), who continues the style of his more important father, the painter Bartolommeo, the gifted Giulio Campagnola in Venice (about 1482 to after 1514), whose work, executed in a curious dot manner akin to the later stipple, shows the nearest approach in engraving to the effects Giorgione was aiming at in painting, and others.
But it is to Rome by way of Bologna that we must now turn. Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1480–c. 1530), trained in the workshop of the goldsmith-painter, Francia, in the latter city, at first engraved solely after drawings by or in the style of his master. Marcantonio's powers and his technique gradually im proved with study and by copying Diirer and Lucas van Leyden, and after a stay in Florence and Venice he betook himself about 1510 to Rome. Here he came into contact with Raphael, who supplied the engraver with sketches from which to work. It is this contact which has given to Marcantonio his enormous, per haps exaggerated reputation. We possess Raphael's drawings for `'The Massacre of the Innocents," Marcantonio's most famous engraving, and can consequently judge of it not only on its merits, but in relation to Raphael's conception, and it stands the test triumphantly. With Raphael's death, in 1520, the life went out of Marcantonio's work; he continued to engrave after his paint ings, but there is an obvious deterioration.
Sixteenth Century Engraving.—The influence exercised by Raphael, especially through the engravings made by Marcantonio and his followers, over European art south and north of the Alps, can hardly be exaggerated, though, in Germany, the victory of the Raphaelesque was not so overwhelming or so sudden. The so-called Little Masters, the two Behams, Bartel (1502-154o) and Hans Sebald (1500-1550) and George Pencz (c. 1500-1550) of Nuremberg, together with Jacob Binck (d. about 1569) and Heinrich Aldegrever (1502–after 1555) continued the tradition of original engraving, along the lines which Diirer had inaugurated, and added something to the sum of the engraver's achievement, and in Ratisbon Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480-1538), of a previous generation, was the chief exponent of a quite individual style.
But with about the year 155o, engraving, as well as the other arts in Germany, has passed its prime and the second half of the century is a decline, redeemed by fewer and fewer works of originality.
With the middle of the century engraving in the Netherlands has become commercialized. Engravers are employed by publish ing firms, like that of Jerome Cock at Antwerp, to reproduce works, Netherlandish and Italian alike, for which there appears to be a demand. Even works engraved by Italians are published in the Netherlands, while Netherlandish engravers at the same time work in Italy, so that the sharp lines formerly delimiting the national styles are blurred. The tendency is for the technique of Italian engraving, which from the first owed something to northern models, to assume an even more northern character, while the influence of Italy is a general one on all northern art and only incidentally on engraving. The output of engraving in what is now Belgium, especially in Antwerp, during the two middle quarters of the century is enormous, but its character uninteresting; after about 157o the centre shifts to Holland and it is the school of Hendrik Goltzius, Jacob Matham and Jan Saenredam, who continue and exaggerate the mannerisms of Lucas van Leyden's later style, which is most characteristic of the period and has the most influence on the subsequent development of engraving.
In Italy the school which Marcantonio had founded comprised a number of skilful engravers who continued the work of popu larizing the paintings of Raphael and his pupils. But it was the Marcantonio in his latest and least satisfactory phase, who was their model, and the pupils rather than Raphael himself their inspiration. By about 156o the art is mainly represented in the persons of foreign engravers like Cornelius Cort, and it is in this school that Lodovico Carracci and other Italian artists were trained.
In France, the i6th century produced one outstanding artist of small accomplishment as an engraver, but a remarkable genius, Jean Duvet (1485–c. 1561), and a group of engravers working at Lyons in the first half of the i6th century produced work of some decorative charm, while the portrait engravers foreshadow the great school of portrait engraving that followed in the 17th century.