The Young Shepherd
Engraving c1510
Size of original 134 x 78 mm, 5 1/4 x 3 inches
In this beautiful print Campagnola triumphantly achieves the mood of a Giorgionesque pastoral in the medium of engraving. This is certainly no depiction of an agricultural worker, but a pastoral idyll. The old man resting at his feet sets up a contrast between youth and age that is mirrored by the leafy and the dead branches of the tree behind.
A more specific subject has been proposed for the print. Mopsus and Menalcus are two shepherds, respectively young and old, from Virgil’s 5th Ecologue. Menalcus praises Mopsus’s playing on the flute as being, among other things, “like sleep on the grass to the weary”. Whether or not this was actually meant to be the subject we cannot be sure, but the print would certainly be a fitting illustration for the passage.
Campagnola’s achievement is a considerable one. Venetian painting had been renowned for the beauty of its colouring, and Giorgione was famous for introducing ‘sfumatto’ (“smoky”) effects, where forms seemed to merge indistinctly into the whole composition. To attempt to emulate these qualities in the medium of black on white engraving was clearly a considerable challenge.
In Florence painters regarded “disegno” or drawing as the foundation of their art, and made large numbers of drawings as sketches and studies for paintings, or for their own sake. A large proportion of these were in pure line, whether ink or pencil, and Florentine artists wanting to create prints had already a training in creating images in line alone, and probably access to a wide choice of variations of the local drawing style to give them a basis for their engraving technique.
It was not so in Venice, where far fewer drawings seem to have been done by artists, and many of those were either in very bare outline, or in painterly media like chalk or brush which gave little help to an engraver looking to develop a Venetian engraving style. Jacobo de' Barbari, the only significant Venetian engraver before 1500, had left the city for Germany by 1501, and thereafter spent most or all of his life abroad.
It is no surprise that Campagnola, like other young Venetian engravers – notably Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano - began by copying the prints of Dürer and Mantegna and adapting as best they could their techniques for their own compositions.
Around 1509, Campagnola began to experiment with the effects he could achieve by dots or small flicks on the engraving plate, thus effectively inventing the stipple technique (see our description of his Baby with Three Cats for more on this transition). This print is one of three where there is a first state done purely in line, and the plate was then worked over in stipple for a second state. In this print the solid lines have all but disappeared except in a few places.
The signature is added in ink. Similar signatures are added to a number of fine impressions of Campagnola's prints and it is believed they are written by the artist himself.
The title of the Young Shepherd dates back only two hundred years, but although no sheep are seen, there is another Campagnola engraving called the Old Shepherd, of a similar size but in a ‘landscape’ format. The Old Shepherd does have a sheep and a goat to tend, although he is just as inattentive to them as his young colleague. The Young Shepherd’s clothes are contemporary, which is typical for Venetian pastoral scenes, and the flutes he holds are a common attribute of Renaissance shepherds.
The two figures in the foreground of Il Tramonto (the Sunset) in the National Gallery, London are fairly similar to the figures in the print, reversed. The picture is listed as by Giorgione by the NG although this is not universally agreed, and it was attributed to Campagnola himself by the late WR Rearick.
Click image to enlarge
Size of reproduction:
158 x 92 mm, 6 1/10 x 3 9/16 inches ENLARGED
Print price:
£22 €32 $35
Size of reproduction:
134 x 78 mm, 5 1/4 x 3 inches
Print price:
£18.00, €27.00, $30.00
£ and € print prices include UK VAT at 17.5%. No UK VAT on Books.
© The Trustees of the British Museum 2006 PD 1845-8-25-764
