Concert by a brook

This clean and crisp print in high contrast is from a plate that was probably completed by Giulio Campagnola’s adopted son, Domenico, after his father’s death in 1516. The right half of the image was obviously complete at the time of his death and is the work of Giulio alone – as is apparent in the extremely dense hatching, which takes the form of a delicate, cross-hatched net in the deep shadows. In the passages executed by Giulio, the composition precisely adheres to a pen-and-ink drawing in the Louvre, which was created for and then pricked for transfer […]. When Domenico began to work on the plate, he did not carry out the wooded area and the two crouching old men, which he presumably considered too static and stiff. However, these elements from the preliminary drawing had already been transferred to the plate and their contours remain clearly recognizable on the print – despite the hatching placed on top of them. The younger Campagnola replaced them with a more dynamic vegetation and with the complexly intertwined group of young shepherds playing music: both executed with his expressive and open use of the burin. The brook, which is also absent from the preliminary drawing, separates the areas contributed by the two artists. This deliberate shift from a stoic-meditative to a serene-melancholy temperament and mode – a shift that is particularly visible in the stylistic contrast – may derive from Titian’s Pastoral Concert (c. 1509, Musée du Louvre, Paris).