(b Mantua, 1558–9; d 1629).
Italian woodcutter and printer. He was the only printmaker to produce a significant number of chiaroscuro woodcuts in Italy in the second half of the 16th century; he also reprinted chiaroscuro woodblocks originally cut 60 or 70 years earlier. He made at least 35 prints in both black and white and colour (many multiple-sheet), using a sophisticated style of cutting characterized by thin, closed contours. Based in Florence in 1584–5 and from 1586 in Siena, by 1590 he was also finding work in his native Mantua, where he is documented as establishing a workshop. He reproduced the designs of artists in diverse media with great fidelity: for example he made several prints (1586–90) after Domenico Beccafumi’s intarsia pavement designs in Siena Cathedral, three prints (1584) from different angles of Giambologna’s marble sculpture of the Rape of the Sabines (Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi; see fig.), as well as of the bas-relief on the base of the same group and of Giambologna’s relief of ...