page_title: Antonio Fantuzzi
section_title: The Fontainebleau workshop
hierarchical_section_title: Antonio Fantuzzi / The Fontainebleau workshop
caption_attribution_description: English: Italy, circa 1542 Series: The Frieze of Sigismond Prints; etchings Etching Mary Stansbury Ruiz Bequest (M.88.91.530) Prints and Drawings
context_page_description: Antonio Fantuzzi was an Italian painter and printmaker active in the French Renaissance in a Mannerist style. All that is known about his early life is that he was born in Bologna, from the accounts at Fontainebleau and one inscription on a print.
  He is recorded as a painter of the First School of Fontainebleau from 1537 into the 1540s, at first on "modest wages", but from 1540 better paid, and apparently a principal assistant to Francesco Primaticcio, who had taken charge of the "school" decorating the Palace of Fontainebleau after the suicide in 1540 of Rosso Fiorentino. Primaticcio was also Bolognese, and may well have summoned Fantuzzi to France in 1537, although he may well have only completed his training in France. He became a leading member of the printmaking workshop at Fontainebleau and nearly 100 etchings survive, 16 dated between 1542 and 1545. Most copy designs by Rosso, Giulio Romano, or Primaticcio. He is last recorded at Fontainebleau in 1550.
context_section_description: Although there is no certain proof, most scholars have agreed that there was a printmaking workshop at the Palace of Fontainebleau itself, reproducing the designs of the artists for their works in the palace, as well as other compositions they produced, and copying from drawings by other masters brought from Italy, probably mainly by Primaticcio.  The most productive printmakers were Davent, Fantuzzi, and Jean Mignon, followed by the "mysterious" artist known from his monogram as "Master I♀V" (♀ being the alchemical symbol for copper, from which the printing plates were made).  The workshop seems to have been active between about 1542 and 1548 at the latest; Francis I of France died in March 1547, after which funding for the palace wound down, and the school dispersed.  Hundreds of etchings were produced; these were the first etchings made in France, and not far behind the first Italian uses of the technique, which originated in Germany.  The earliest impressions of all the Fontainebleau prints are in brown ink, and their intention seems to have been essentially reproductive.
  The intention of the workshop was to disseminate the new style developing at the palace more widely, both to France and to the Italians' peers back in Italy.  Whether the initiative to do this came from the king or another patron, or from the artists alone, is unclear. David Landau believes that Primaticcio was the driving force; he had stepped up to become the director of the work at Fontainebleau after the suicide (if Vasari is believed) of Rosso Fiorentino in 1540.
  The enterprise seems to have been "just slightly premature" in terms of catching a market.  The etched prints were often marked by signs of the workshop's inexperience and sometimes incompetence with the technique of etching, and according to Sue Welsh Reed: "Few impressions survive from these plates, and it is questionable whether many were pulled. The plates were often poorly executed and not well printed; they were often scratched or not well polished and did not wipe clean.  Some may have been made of metals soft as copper, such as pewter."  A broadening market for prints preferred the "highly finished textures" of Nicolas Beatrizet, and later "proficient but ultimately uninspired" engravers such as René Boyvin and Pierre Milan.
caption: Marching Troops with Shields, etching, after Giulio Romano
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