Maarten van Heemskerck Heemskerk 1498 - 1574 Haarlem

This drawing is based on one of the set of four prints of the Evangelists, after designs by Giulio Romano, engraved by Agostino Veneziano (not Marcantonio Raimondi, as stated by Bartsch, xxvi, 92). According to Vasari the four evangelists were frescoed by Giulio, together with Giovanni Francesco Penni, in the vault of the Massimi chapel in Roman church of Sta. Trinità dei Monti, but few modern scholars accept this account (see S. Massari, Giulio Romano pinxit and delineavit, Rome 1993, pp.15 to 18). The engravings by Agostino Veneziano, which dated from 1518, seem in fact to relate to an unrecorded work by Giulio. In the eighteenth century the four evangelists were thought to be based on Raphael. Although Heemskerck did make various prints after compositions by the Italian masters, notably a series of twenty plates, similar in conception to this composition, recording Michalangelo's famous Sistine ceiling Ignudi (Holl.553-572), he did not in fact make an engraving after the present drawing.