BALDINI, Baccio

(b. 1436 ?, d. 1487 Firenze)

Italian goldsmith and engraver. According to Vasari, he was a follower of Maso Finiguerra and engraved a series of 19 prints after designs by Botticelli. These illustrate an edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy published in 1481. A group of prints in the same Fine Manner style is attributed to Baldini. His designs incorporate figures and motifs derived from Botticelli, Piero Pollaiuolo and also German printmakers, such as the Master E.S. and Martin Schongauer, but particularly from Finiguerra. Baldini’s Fine Manner style developed from Finiguerra’s niello print technique; the rendering of spatial recession in the large Judgement Hall of Pilate (435 x 598 mm) suggests it was designed by Finiguerra. With the other prints, however, it shares the decorative quality and emphasis on pattern characteristic of Baldini.

Inferno I

The engraving was made after Sandro Botticelli’s design.

Botticelli’s designs for the copper engravings were probably the starting point for his manuscript drawings. This is not the only place where the marvelously pensive figure of Dante was reused. Botticelli also repeated this figure twice in his paintings, on both occasions in the first panel of the picture cycles on the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti and the Story of St Zenobius.

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Mercury

The artist has placed this imaginary scene before the actual main civil piazza of Florence. In the background on the left is the crenellated fa�ade of the Palazzo della Signoria and the now destroyed church of San Piero Scheraggio, and in the centre background is the Loggia della Signoria.

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Mercury on a Triumphal Car

This engraving from the astrological calendar of Baccio Baldini shows Mercury on a triumphal car with the signs of Virgo and Gemini.

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