A lion, dragon and fox fighting each other, an inscribed banderole above, an oval composition
ca. 1515–27
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet (Trimmed to image): 4 3/16 × 6 1/4 in. (10.7 × 15.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951
Accession Number
51.501.638
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the bustling world of early 16th-century Italian printmaking, Marco D's engraving *A lion, dragon and fighting each other, an banderole above, oval composition* (ca. 1515–27) captures dramatic clash of mythical and symbolic beasts. Created during the High Renaissance, this small-scale work (4 3/16 × 6 1/4 in.) showcases Dente's mastery of, a precise intaglio technique where lines are incised into a metal plate with a burin, inked, and pressed onto paper. This method allowed artists like Dente to produce detailed, reproducible images that democratized access to complex designs, bridging the ...
About the Artist
Marco Dente · 1515–1527
Marco Dente (died 1527), also known as Marco da Ravenna, was among the most accomplished printmakers working in Rome during the High Renaissance, a period that witnessed an extraordinary flowering of engraving as both a reproductive and an independent artistic medium. Little is known of his early training, but by the second decade of the sixteenth century he had established himself in the orbit of...