Marcantonio Raimondis career is here considered as a record of a distinctively
Renaissance hunger for imagery, on the part of the literate as well as the
illiterate, a taste that did not demand autograph work and yet was very
attentive to the decisions made by artists about which subjects to portray and
how to present them. Marcantonios contribution is described less in terms of
having made Raphaels work known widely, and more as having made engraving into
an established art form: collectible, discussable, debatable. His innovative
technique yielded, it is argued, images of deliberately impersonal style, an
accomplishment obscured by the ensuing emphasis on maniera.
