Ugo da Carpi

Ugo da Carpi
Diogenes
Born	1480 Carpi, Italy
Died	c. 1532
Nationality	Italian
Known for	print making; chiaroscuro

Ugo da Carpi (c. 1480 – c. 1532) was an Italian printmaker, active between 1520 and 1532 in the cities of Venice, Rome and Bologna. He is renowned for his stylistic contributions to chiacoscuro, a wood cutting technique involving the use of several wood blocks to make one print, each block cut to produce a different tone of the same color. Despite his claims, however, he was not the first to use or create this technique. His most notable work is a striking carving of Diogensis based off of a painting by Parmigianino. In addition to his numerous artistic prints, he produced a writing book. He is also known to have produced at least one painting.

Ugo was born around 1480 in the town of Carpi, which is why he is known today as Ugo da Carpi. "Da Carpi" simply translates to "of Carpi," referring to the town where he was born. However, he may have also been known as Ugo Panico at an earlier time. He trained as a type-founder and painter, although Ugo was most likely either self-taught or taught by local painters. He is the most well-known for his print-making, which was utilized to copy other 15th-century works. Ugo's name is well known because he broke from the printing tradition and signed his prints. He claims to be the first practitioner of chiacoscuro, but this method had actually been previously used by both German and Venetian artists. Nevertheless, Ugo requested a patent from the Venetian senate in July, 1516 for what he claimed to be his unique method. In his request he described the process as a "new manner of printing light and dark." Despite the evidence of this method in previous German and Venetian art, he was eventually granted a copyright by the Vatican in 1518.

He worked in Venice from 1509 to 1517, mostly working with woodcutting for book illustrations, before moving to Rome. There was a large print making circle in Rome. He settled in Rome near Raphael's studio and it is clear in his work that he was influenced by Raphael's style.

Following the sack of Rome in 1527 he moved to Bologna. Due to a number of prints that have technical and sylistic similarities to Ugo's work, but some noteable differences, it is believed he may have run a workshop during his time there. Also during his years in Bologna, he was associated with the famous carvers Arrighi and Eustachio Celebrino. In 1525 Ugo produced a writing-book, which were common in Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were essentially manuals, which aimed to teach other's how to write legibly and quickly, in a manner similar to Renaissance humanist manuscripts, via pages of letters printed using carvings.

There is no comprehensive list of the works that Ugo produced, but Ugo produced numerous works during his life.

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