Raphael, Dürer and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print (review)

Much of this provocative publication builds upon Pon's valuable work for the Society of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), bringing out vital, novel approaches to the history and concept of graphic multiples, whether in print or book form.

The introduction ("Practical Collaboration and Possessive Authorship") invokes today's inevitable academic trinity — the Three Bs — Bakhtin, Barthes, and Benjamin. Pon's chapter 1 "Framing Marcantonio Raimondi's Prints" is a lively, original, and dynamic discussion of printing and copying in Renaissance Venice. She also presents a fascinating discussion of nineteenth-century photographic reproductions of prints, those of Delessert and the negative view of Delaborde. Contrafatto is explored here and in her last chapter. She adds many important aperçus to those of Landau and Bury in the complex realm of the "reproductive print."

Pon takes up such challenging issues as "What is a publisher?", the role of the Privilege, and "The Renaissance Culture of Copying" in "Aldus Manutius's Venice" (chapter 2). Her discussion of "translation as a trope" (33–36) is excellent, as is a most informative section on Marcantonio's Venetian publisher. Here Pon deals with the very little known Gesuati in highly illuminating fashion (see also her appendix, "Documents relating to Niccolo and Domenico dal Jesus"). These sections make manifest why the Delmas Foundation deservedly contributed to Pon's publication since the section on publishing in the Serenissima brings much new information to light.

The third chapter, "Raphael's Signature," asks and answers many stimulating questions about the nature of the supposedly reproductive print and once again presents a valuable discussion of the Privilege and of the issue of Eigenhändigkeit. Pon might have commented upon the way (and the why) of Apollo's being draped (as opposed to largely nude) in the engraved Parnassus, and how the whole dynamic of Raphael's composition is lost in its squared-off "reproduction."

"Raphael's Graphic Intelligence" (chapter 4), in which Pon takes over that difficult, sophisticated Alpers/Baxandall concept of "Pictorial Intelligence," is not a success. Unfortunately, the costly research that went into her extensive study of the collaborative Raphael/Marcantonio Massacre of the Innocents — arguably the most important engraving ever made — has seemingly not paid off. All the digital enhancing and superimposition of drawings conducted in Getty-financed exploration remain obscure since the reproductions of the fruits of these processes are far too small for ready legibility. Even the author's highly equivocal discussion (136) of such extensive technical research would seem to doubt its value.

"Vasari's Marcantonio," the concluding fifth chapter, is once again in the author's happiest mode — well informed, brisk, intelligent, and often highly original.