Be a Renaissance man and collect this gentle engraving by Jacopo de’ Barbari titled “Mars & Venus”!
This very image is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Other engravings by Jacopo de’ Barberi are found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum (London, England), and many other museums.
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Artist Bio:
Jacopo de' Barbari (c. 1460/70 – before 1516), was an Italian painter, printmaker and miniaturist with a highly individual style. He moved from Venice to Germany in 1500, thus becoming the first Italian Renaissance artist of stature to work in Northern Europe. His few surviving paintings (about twelve) include the first known example of trompe-l'œil since antiquity. His twenty-nine engravings and three very large woodcuts were also highly influential during the Renaissance period. After moving to Germany, Jacopo de’ Barbari chose Nuremberg as his residence, frequented the imperial court of Augsburg where he received commissions from the Emperor Maximilian himself, and also Weimar, Wittenberg, Heidelberg and Frankfurt on the Oder, before moving on to Flanders, between Antwerp and Brussels, appointed valet painter of the chamber of Archduchess Margaret of Austria, regent of Holland. His stylistic approach made him a much-loved author in the Germanic Courts, which, at the beginning of the 16th century, were particularly attracted to Italian art. Jacopo de' Barbari's engravings are signed with a caduceus (a staff with two serpents twined around it) and until the mid-19th century his true identity was a mystery. It is now known that he was the first Italian Renaissance artist of note to travel to Germany and the Netherlands, and that his work was known and appreciated by Albrecht Dürer. There is still much scholarly debate as to the exact influence of Barbari's work on Dürer's engravings, and vice versa, and a comparison between the two artists does indeed pose a variety of interesting questions.