A number of sources, including Vasari, say that Campagnola was extremely accomplished in a number of artistic areas as a teenager. A letter written by a relative when he was fifteen describes him as a talented poet, singer and lutenist, able to read Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and skilled in painting, engraving and cutting gemstones. This letter was sent to the court at Mantua (where Andrea Mantegna was then the court artist) in an attempt to find him a position there. It is not clear if he ever went to Mantua, although (like nearly all contemporary Italian printmakers) his work shows the influence of Mantegna. One engraving is certainly based (perhaps not directly, as there was another print of it) on a drawing by Mantegna or his workshop.
In 1499 he appears (rather briefly) in the accounts of the court at Ferrara, another centre of North Italian printmaking. There is then no documentation until 1507, when another Paduan recorded lending him a painting and three copper engraving plates. This was in Venice, where most writers assume he was living by then. His engraving of an Astrologer is dated 1509 on the plate, and the only later record comes from the will of Aldus Manutius in 1515, when Manutius asks that he be given the work of cutting the moulds for, or perhaps designing, some printing type.
After this there is no further record, but an engraving plate that he had left half-finished was completed by his adopted son c. 1517, so he is assumed to have died by then at the latest, probably in Venice. He had adopted Domenico Campagnola, apparently an orphan of German parentage, in about 1512. Another source claimed that he took holy orders, but this is now discounted.
Fortunately, for those seeking to reconstruct his career, he was in the habit of signing, though not dating, his engravings, often with his full name and Antenoreus, a slightly showy learned reference to the Trojan whom Virgil designated the founder of Padua.
There are drawings related to his prints, and in a similar style to them, but only a handful of these are generally agreed to be by him, with Titian, Giorgione and in one case Mantegna also being brought into contention. It is still possible to see Campagnola, as the late W.R. Rearick did, as a "dilettante" who probably mostly lived in Padua, probably with another career altogether. This, however, remains a minority view.
Most of his prints have no surviving preparatory drawings, and in general the question of whether Campagnola designed them himself, or got other artists to provide him with drawings which he then engraved is still open, although most historians see him as an independent artist responsible for conceiving as well as executing most of his prints, rather than a precursor of Marcantonio Raimondi or Domenico Campagnola in acting as a technical collaborator with a greater artist who supplied the designs.
His early work is heavily influenced by Albrecht Dürer, and includes one direct copy of a Dürer engraving, and a few where landscape elements are copied in a 'cut and paste' way from Dürer.
The next group of engravings, which include the Astrologer, very successfully interpret the mood of Venetian painting of the first decade of the century in the medium of engraving. It is this group that he is most famous for, and that also introduce his stipple technique. Stippling means engraving with dots or little flicks of the burin, rather than the normal lines. Campagnola is able to convey varying tone by different intensities of dots, rather than by techniques of hatching and cross-hatching usually necessary.
These engravings are in a combination of line and stipple work, and in the case of three of them (The Old Shepherd, The Young Shepherd and The Astrologer), there are first states which are purely in line-work. The plates were later reworked in stipple work, in at least one case after a considerable number of impressions of the first state had been taken.
The final group of prints are almost entirely in stipple, except for the main outlines.
There are also some prints in Campagnola's manner of which the authorship is disputed.
A number of sources, including Vasari, say that Campagnola was extremely accomplished in a number of artistic areas as a teenager. A letter written by a relative when he was fifteen describes him as a talented poet, singer and lutenist, able to read Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and skilled in painting, engraving and cutting gemstones. This letter was sent to the court at Mantua (where Andrea Mantegna was then the court artist) in an attempt to find him a position there. It is not clear if he ever went to Mantua, although (like nearly all contemporary Italian printmakers) his work shows the influence of Mantegna. One engraving is certainly based (perhaps not directly, as there was another print of it) on a drawing by Mantegna or his workshop.
In 1499 he appears (rather briefly) in the accounts of the court at Ferrara, another centre of North Italian printmaking. There is then no documentation until 1507, when another Paduan recorded lending him a painting and three copper engraving plates. This was in Venice, where most writers assume he was living by then. His engraving of an Astrologer is dated 1509 on the plate, and the only later record comes from the will of Aldus Manutius in 1515, when Manutius asks that he be given the work of cutting the moulds for, or perhaps designing, some printing type.
After this there is no further record, but an engraving plate that he had left half-finished was completed by his adopted son c. 1517, so he is assumed to have died by then at the latest, probably in Venice. He had adopted Domenico Campagnola, apparently an orphan of German parentage, in about 1512. Another source claimed that he took holy orders, but this is now discounted.
Fortunately, for those seeking to reconstruct his career, he was in the habit of signing, though not dating, his engravings, often with his full name and Antenoreus, a slightly showy learned reference to the Trojan whom Virgil designated the founder of Padua.
There are drawings related to his prints, and in a similar style to them, but only a handful of these are generally agreed to be by him, with Titian, Giorgione and in one case Mantegna also being brought into contention. It is still possible to see Campagnola, as the late W.R. Rearick did, as a "dilettante" who probably mostly lived in Padua, probably with another career altogether. This, however, remains a minority view.
Most of his prints have no surviving preparatory drawings, and in general the question of whether Campagnola designed them himself, or got other artists to provide him with drawings which he then engraved is still open, although most historians see him as an independent artist responsible for conceiving as well as executing most of his prints, rather than a precursor of Marcantonio Raimondi or Domenico Campagnola in acting as a technical collaborator with a greater artist who supplied the designs.
His early work is heavily influenced by Albrecht Dürer, and includes one direct copy of a Dürer engraving, and a few where landscape elements are copied in a 'cut and paste' way from Dürer.
The next group of engravings, which include the Astrologer, very successfully interpret the mood of Venetian painting of the first decade of the century in the medium of engraving. It is this group that he is most famous for, and that also introduce his stipple technique. Stippling means engraving with dots or little flicks of the burin, rather than the normal lines. Campagnola is able to convey varying tone by different intensities of dots, rather than by techniques of hatching and cross-hatching usually necessary.
These engravings are in a combination of line and stipple work, and in the case of three of them (The Old Shepherd, The Young Shepherd and The Astrologer), there are first states which are purely in line-work. The plates were later reworked in stipple work, in at least one case after a considerable number of impressions of the first state had been taken.
The final group of prints are almost entirely in stipple, except for the main outlines.
There are also some prints in Campagnola's manner of which the authorship is disputed.
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