DA BRESCIA Giovanni Antonio
(active from 1490 to 1525)
We do not know the date of birth of this engraver about whom there are no documentary references.
His career can be reconstructed thanks to twenty-seven engravings (signature only three signature are dated) and others attributed to him. Probably, when he was already affirmed in the art of burin, Giovanni Antonio moved from Brescia to Mantua to join the workshop of Andrea Mantegna. The transfer should have taken place around the years 1485-90, when Mantegna decided to use skilled engravers to gain greater disclosure of his works.
Giovanni Antonio’s role in Mantegna’s school has recently been debated and revised at the Mantegna exhibition held in London and New York in 1992. In particular, in his own study, Boorsch (pp. 56-66) argued, contrary to other experts, that some of the twenty prints with the monogram “Z. A.” would not have been engraved by Zoan Andrea, but by Giovanni Antonio himself, who would use the monogram of venetian dialect ” Z. A.” for” Zoan Antonio “.
His style is also well visible in a group of unsigned prints, already attributed to Zoan Andrea, but best suited on the production of Giovanni Antonio da Brescia at the beginning of the sixteenth century, such as the Burial of Christ, the Risen Christ between the St. Andrea and Longino, the Christ at Limbo and the Virtus deserted Virtus-combusta all derived from Mantegna.
The mantegnasco period is documented by a series of good quality prints dating from the last decade of the 15th century to the beginning of the following century. The death of Mantegna (1506) ended the first period of Giovanni Antonio’s work, a skillful reproduction artist but unable to invent original subjects.
Giovanni Antonio also had the opportunity to know about Dürer’s works, of which he copied (and signed) four prints: the Holy Family, the Prodigal Son, the Great Horse and the Dream of the Doctor.
Around 1513 he moved to Rome where he was influenced by Marcantonio Raimondi’s style as it appears in the last prints of Giovanni Antonio: Woman pouring water on a plant (or Grammar), Madonna and Child on clouds, and Santa Veronica. In the last years he performed engravings of mythological, architectural and ornamental matter.
The year of his death is unknown, but certainly after 1525.