Four Dancing Muses by the School of Mantegna in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 2010

Artist: Premier Engraver (possibly Giovanni Antonio da Brescia) (Italian, active ca. 1490-1525)

After: Andrea Mantegna (Italian, Isola di Carturo 1430/31 - 1506 Mantua)

Title: Four Dancing Muses

Date: ca. 1497

Medium: Engraving

Dimensions: plate: 10 1/4 x 13 3/4 in. (26 x 35 cm)

Classification: Print

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1920

Accession Number: 20.5.3

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/drawin...

and

This engraving reproduces, with a few variants, four of the dancing Muses in Andrea Mantegna's Parnassus (ca. 1497; Musee du Louvre, Paris), painted for the studiolo of Isabella d'Este in Mantua. The fact that the copper plate for this engraving remained in Mantegna's family until after his death suggests that the print was made by an artist with whom he collaborated. It is executed by an anonymous hand working in an engraving style prevalent in not only in Mantua in the circle of Mantegna, but also in Florence in the last quarter of the fifteenth century. As can be seen here and in other examples displayed nearby, the style is dominated by the use of powerful contours and repeated parallel hatching to define and model form.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.