Faith, Parmigianino. Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, Italian.
Summary
Allegorical print shows a woman as Faith, one of the theological virtues, holding a chalice, with one knee on a low wall outside a doorway.
Title from Graphic sampler / compiled by Renata V. Shaw, Prints and Photographs Division. Washington : Library of Congress, 1979, pp. 24-28.
Printed from a woodblock by the workshop of Vicentino after a design by Parmigianino.
From Marsh Collection.
Printmaking in woodcut and engraving came to Northern Italy within a few decades of their invention north of the Alps. Engraving probably came first to Florence in the 1440s, the goldsmith Maso Finiguerra (1426–64) used the technique. Italian engraving caught the very early Renaissance, 1460–1490. Print copying was a widely accepted practice, as well as copying of paintings viewed as images in their own right.