Marcantonio Raimondi e i nordici

In this article the author proposes an overall reconsideration of the relationships of Marcantonio Raimondi with the Nordic engravers, paying constant attention to the surviving sources. Furthermore, a new analysis of some passages from the Vita di Marcantonio Bolognese, e d’altri intagliatori di stampe by Giorgio Vasari has allowed a different interpretation of the Italian reception of some prints by Lucas van Leyden as well as of the Portrait of Pietro Aretino executed by Marcantonio: one of the masterpieces of European Renaissance engraving, which, for the first time, is being read here in the light of knowledge of a genre of portraiture emerged in Norhtern Europe in the early 1500s, that combines bust portraits with elegant Latin (and Greek) epigraphs - very significative for Marcantonio has been some famous engravings by Albrecht Dürer.