1518
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Apollo on Parnassus is a 1518 by Marcantonio Raimondi, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A crowd of gods and poets fills a hillside under a bright sky. Apollo plays a lyre at the center, surrounded by the nine Muses and famous writers like Homer and Dante. This print copies a fresco Raphael painted for the Pope’s private rooms. It shows how Renaissance artists revived ancient Greek stories, even in the Vatican. The engraving spread Raphael’s ideas across Europe. Look up *sfumato*—the soft, smoky shading Raphael used in his original design.
Around 1510, the influential painter Raphael began collaborating with the engraver Raimondi to translate his designs into prints, which allowed his works to reach an international audience. This engraving replicates Raphael’s design for a fresco he painted in the personal apartments of Pope Julius II (1443–1513), showing that devotion to classical ideas reached even the highest levels of religious authority. In addition to Apollo and his muses, Raphael portrayed some of history’s most celebrated poets on the Greek mountain Parnassus. On the left, next to a seated scribe, the ancient Greek…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio (c. 1470/82 – c. 1534), was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He…
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