Ugo da Carpi

Descent from the Cross

Diogenes (c. 1524-29), chiaroscuro woodcut, after Parmigianino.

Ugo da Carpi’s supplication for a patent for the chiaroscuro woodcut, 1516.

Ugo da Carpi (c. 1480 – between 1520 and 1532), painter and printmaker, the first Italian practitioner of the art of the chiaroscuro woodcut, a technique involving the use of several wood blocks to make one print, each block cut to produce a different tone of the same colour.^[1] In 1516, he requested from the Venetian senate a patent for his method "of making from woodcuts prints that seem as though painted". Most of his prints depict works by Raphael and Parmigianino, including one entitled "Hercules Chasing Avarice from the Temple of the Muses".

His best known engravings include "A Sybil", "Descent from the Cross", and "History of Simon the Sorcerer".

References

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