Due Sibille e un angelo

Engraving, 1520 circa, unlettered.

Magnificient proof, printed on contemporary laid paper, trimmed close to platemark, papaer fold and small repairs aon the back side, otherwise very good condition.

The attribution of this unsigned print, which Bartsch had catalogued with the anonimous followers of Marcantonio, appears to be certain. One of several engravings that Giovanni Antonio made after designs by Raphael, it reproduces in reverse the two sibyls with an angel and a putto from the right-hand section of the master’s fresco in Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, executed in the years 1511-12.

Giovanni Antonio’s engraving, may not have been produced until around 1520 circa. It’s characteristic of his later manner, in its fine and regular crosshatching the engraving is especially close to “Laocoon”, where the architectural elements in particular are handled in the same way.

Giovanni Antonio made a number of small modifications to his model, chief among which are the addition of the clouds and the omission of the Latin and Greek inscriptions on the slablike plaque and the scroll.

Raphael’s sibyls were once assigned definite identities, but Ettlinger has recently shown that these are of eighteenth-century origin, thus the traditional identification of the two in the engraving as Phrygian and Tiburtine is at best uncertain.