4. Marco Dente da Ravenna (fl. 1520-1527)
after Giulio Romano (ca. 1499-1546)
Entellus and Dares

(click on image to print)
Marco Dente, Entellus and Dares

Entellus and Dares

Engraving, 1520-25, Bartsch 195 i/ii (before address of Salamanca), Masari 37 i/iii, 309 x 273 mm. A fine, clear but not black impression on laid paper with the watermark of a star (Rome, 16th century), trimmed on or just inside the plate mark but with a narrow white border outside the borderline all around. The combat between the Sicilian Entellus and the Trojan Dares derives from Book V of Virgil’s Aeneid, but the figures are actually taken, rather freely, from those of two gladiators in Giulio’s circular ceiling fresco, called The Parting of the Hooves of Taurus in the Sala dei Venti of the Palazzo del Te in Mantua and possibly from a prior invention of Raphael. Ultimately, according to Bruce Davis, the figures derive from a second-century Roman marble relief of two boxers, presently in the Museo Gregorio Profano of the Vatican, one more example of Renaissance roots in the antique. With, or despite, all this and with Dente’s addition of ruins of the Colosseum as a background, Bartsch praised the work as one of the artist’s finest engravings. Often seen in late, 18th-century impressions, with one or another publisher’s address, 16th-century impressions of the print are uncommon. It is not a copy after Marcantonio Raimondi, but an original work.