DE MUSI Agostino

‘Agostino Veneziano’ (Venice 1490 – Rome 1540)

Italian engraver formed in Venice where he performed his first works on Dürer and Giulio Campagnola’s models. After a short stay in Florence where he carried out works derived by Andrea del Sarto and Michelangelo, he was called to Rome by Raffaello with the aim of collaborating in the translation of his drawings at the workshop of Marcantonio Raimondi.

After a period of intense activity at the Marcantonio Laboratory, he probably spent more difficult years because of Raffaello’s death in 1520 and the imprisonment of Raimondi himself around 1523-24, because of the engraving of some lascivious subjects. Forced to escape after the plunder of Rome in 1527, he settled in Mantua where he realized numerous engravings from subjects by Giulio Romano.

Back to Rome after 1530 he worked for Antonio Salamanca’s print shop, the first of the great Roman publishers, reproducing with great mastery decorative objects derived from antique paintings and bas-reliefs. He probably died in Rome between 1536 and 1540.