The Death of Ananias

Bartsch XII,46.27 ii/iii; Servolini 6: ii/iv Ugo da Carpi was born in a small town in the Veneto region near Modena and is considered among the most important chiaroscuro woodcut printmakers in Italy in the early 16th century. Primarily a reproductive printmaker, Ugo was among the first to inscribe in the block both his name and that of the artist responsible for the "invenzione". He employed multiple blocks for his colours and claimed to have invented the chiaroscuro woodcut when he asked the Venetian senate, in 1516, to copyright the process - although it had been used in Germany for at least six years. With chiaroscuro, tone and colour generate form in a sequence of silhouette, shadow and relative light, rather than through contours and hatched line modelling on a single block. "Death of Ananias" is after a famous tapestry cartoon now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, originally commissioned by Leo X for the Sistine Chapel.