RAIMONDI, ri-mlinsde, Marc Antonio (MmtcArroxio), Italian copper-plate engraver: b. Bologna, about 1480; d. there, about 1534. He acquired the goldsmith's art in France and was especially successful in niello, btit finidly gave all his attention to engraving on copper. In 1505 he went to Venice and attracted tion by his copy on metal plate of Diirer's (Life of the Virgin.> He was later attracted to Rome, where Raphael soon selected him as the engraver of his pictures. After Raphael's death Giulio Romano commissioned him to make plates from 20 of his best paintings, but having reproduced some licentious designs of that artist, Pope Clement VII ordered the plates to be destroyed by the public executioner and Raimondi was cast into prison. He was re leased through the intercession of the sculptor Bandinelli, and to show his gratitude Raimondi made a copy in line engraving of Bandinelli's (Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence.> Losing his pitiperty in the sack of Rome (1527) he re turned to Bologna, where he died a few years later. The value of his engravings after
Raphael lies in the fact that they were executed under that artist's eye, and were many of them copies, not of completed pictures, but of rough draughts and tentative designs, which but for these copper-plate reproductions would have been lost to the world. Being thus brought in intimate relation with the painter's methods, he became the best interpreter of Raphael in black and white, and no engraver has so completely entered into the spirit and power of expression which breathe in the canvas of the greatest Italian painter. His best engravings after Raphael include
and Eve' ;
Com mands Noah to Build the Ark> ; (The Massacre of the Innocents);
with the Dead Christ' ;