103 frantzeska papadopoulou skarp cooperation and minimizing risks. These contracts are indicative of the evolution of the Renaissance market and of the impact of prints thereof.5960 Finally, Marcantonio’s copies of Dürer’s Life of the Virginseries is a characteristic case of collaborative authorship. Marcantonio seems to have copied Dürer because he deeply admired him as an artist. He transposed the image in a new medium, an engraving instead of a woodcut he “read” Dürer’s work. Marcantonio had to work with an adaptation of the work, for the aesthetic result to be of a corresponding aesthetic quality, despite the limitations of the new medium. That also meant that Marcantonio adapted the image, entering in a creative dialogue with Dürer and creating a new work of art.61 It is difficult to tell what differentiates the copies of Dürer’s woodcuts copied by Marcantanio and why some include only Dürer’s monogram, others only Marcantonio’s monogram, while some others include the monograms of all parties involved (Dürer, Marcantonio and the publisher). It is also not clear why Dürer files a complaint for these specific cases of copies produced by a renowned and respected artist as Marcantonio and not for other counterfeiters that we know also flooded the market at the time. It would take a few more centuries before artists would be able to control the copies of their works of art, protecting the actual work of art reproduced. The fact, however, that Dürer manages to protect himself from competition by constructing a branding strategy and then also enforcing it by means of legal proceedings, is noteworthy. As the artist removes himself from the control and privilege of a patron and turns to the broader (and anonymous) public, both the brand itself and its legal enforcement turn into vessels of authorship. 59 Spear, Richard, E., Sohm, Philip, Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. 60 Anthony, Hughes, ‘“The Cave and the Stithy: Artists’ Studios and Intellectual Property in Early Modern Europe’, Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1, 1990, pp. 34–48. 61 Pon, Lisa, Raphael, Dürer and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print, 2004, pp. 27–33.
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