Apollo sitting on Parnassus surrounded by the muses and famous poets

Marcantonio was a manufacturer of images, responsible for interpreting through hundreds of engravings some of the major monuments of the Renaissance. The inscription on this print—RAPHAEL PINXIT IN VATICANO [Raphael painted it] / MAF [Marcantonio made it]—acknowledges the separation of idea from execution. Marcantonio’s print is based on an early composition for Raphael’s fresco Parnassus in the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura, which shows Apollo on Parnassus surrounded by the muses and famous poets. Located in the Pope’s private apartments, the fresco was not publicly accessible until the seventeenth century, underscoring the important role reproductive prints played in spreading human knowledge. The Johnson’s rich collection of early prints ranges from fifteenth-century woodcuts for book illustration and devotional purposes, to the beginnings of modernism. Particular strengths include the prints of Raimondi, Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Dürer, and Hendrick Goltzius, as well as Rembrandt and other seventeenth-century masters. Additional selections from the print collection are exhibited on Floor 2. (“Highlights from the Collection: 45 Years at the Johnson,” curated by Stephanie Wiles and presented at the Johnson Museum January 27–July 22, 2018)