Battle of the Nudes

plate was cut, that while the sheer number of extant impressions (approximately
forty-eight) indicates the extent to which the print was prized over the years, the
fact that the majority are late, most likely posthumous impressions, may suggest
that more impressions were made as the popularity of the image increased after the
artist's death. The large number of late, worn impressions also suggests that the
plate seems to have deteriorated (with corrosion as well as wear) fairly quickly and
may not have been printed very long after the sixteenth century. None of the water-
marks indicate an absolute date, early or late, for any of the impressions (see Ap-
pendix: Watermarks).
The possibility that the changes in the plate could have been executed or aided
by an assistant encourages further examination of the quattrocento Italian print-
making process: who was printing the plates, and where (in the artist's workshop or
at the printer's)? The relationship between the designer of the image and the execu-
tion of the engraved plate has been raised most recently in the heated debate over
the authorship of the Mantegna engravings. 89 But one cannot rule out the possibility,
though much less likely since he possessed sophisticated metalworking skills, that
Pollaiuolo provided a drawing (as a maestro di disegno) for another engraver to
execute as a print. Since Bramante's name appears on the engraving executed by
Prevedari, it would not be out of the question for Pollaiuolo's name to appear on an
engraving he did not actually cut, as the one responsible for the image. Inscribed
references such as "inv." to indicate the inventor of the image, "fecit" to indicate the
engraver of the plate, and "excudit" to indicate the publisher (and sometimes
engraver) had not yet entered printmaking practices. These and other unresolved
issues will come into sharper focus as new sources and documents (such as the
contract between Mantegna and an engraver he hired to make prints that was dis-
covered in 2000) are unearthed, and current research projects, such as the fifteenth-
century Italian watermark project at the Istituto Centrale per la Patologia del Libro
in Rome, come to fruition. 90 New research, combined with the opportunity to
compare works side by side, in different contexts, through the periodic organization
of exhibitions such as the present one, will ultimately lead to new revelations
and expand our appreciation of the remarkable achievement of works such as the
Battle of the Nudes. Clearly, the rich field of early Italian engraving has yet to be fully
cultivated.
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