Michele Lucchese

Adam von Bartsch supplied a description of this fascinating print with its attractive iconography, which he placed in the category of Pièces faussement attribuées à Enée Vico, associating it with an anonymous master from the circle around Raphael. In 1908, Federico Hermanin was the first to point out that the back figure of a cavalier with his horse has its origins in a masterpiece by Baldassare Peruzzi – the fresco entitled The Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple in the choir of the Church of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. Hermanin also established that the work was by Michele Lucchese, an attribution that Alessia Alberti was able to confirm on stylistic grounds over a century later.

This superb, concentrated print with its dense composition is undoubtedly one of the artist’s best inventions and is extremely rare. The vigorous, disciplined engraving technique conveys a sense of great strength and gives the work a pronounced three-dimensional quality. Adam von Bartsch interpreted the enigmatic iconography as follows: “La fortune promettant à un jeune homme de le rendre heureux dans ses amours, s’il veut etre hardi et entreprenant ...”. In short, the world belongs to the undaunted and the loving! On the left stands the winged goddess of happiness who holds a globe and a little Amor in her arms. From her raised vantage point she looks down at the casually waiting, dashing young cavalier, whose relaxed pose radiates sprezzatura. The work as a whole evokes the profane world view of the Renaissance; the charming scene provides a perfect symbol of courtly elegance and gallantry, as it were. 

The name of the painter, engraver and publisher, Michele Lucchese, appears for the first time in 1534 in the register of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, and there is written proof that he was a painter in 1551. Lucchese mostly made reproductive engravings after prominent artists of his time, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Polidoro da Caravaggio and Bandinelli, and for this reason alone his prints are of considerable documentary value. His printed oeuvre, which arose between 1547 and 1564, is not mentioned in Adam von Bartsch’s Peintre-Graveur and it was the distinguished Georg Kaspar Nagler who in his lexicon Die Monogrammisten, issued between 1858 and 1863, published the first critical catalogue of Lucchese’s engravings. The work is of eminent rarity. We were able to locate just three other impressions: in the Biblioteca Palatina – Raccolta Ortalli in Parma; the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome; and the Graphische Sammlung Albertina in Vienna. A very fine, contrasting and tonal impression with delicate plate tone. With wide margins. Slight traces of handling and minor ageing, otherwise in impeccable condition. 

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