One print shows the famous Roman sculpture the Laocoön Group, which was excavated in 1506. According to Jacquelyn Sheehan (in 1973), he must have been active there until at least 1525, from the date of a painting he engraved, but Zucker and the British Museum end his activity about 1519 or 1520; another print copies a painting of 1519. Prints His prints are mainly concerned with the figures, which often occupy most of the picture space. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who adopted the extensive landscape backgrounds pioneered by Albrecht Dürer, he is, like Mantegna, relatively little interested in the backgrounds, which are often blank or very simple. According to Sheehan "he never achieves a true unity between figures and setting, as do the more advanced masters of the 16th century". In Mantua his relationship with Mantegna was apparently close, but the precise nature of it remains uncertain. Mantegna had been interested in printmaking for decades, probably since the 1460s, and he is "the artist who can best be claimed to have "invented" printmaking in Italy". Notes References "BM", British Museum, biographical details AM Hind (1923), A History of Engraving and Etching, 1923, Houghton Mifflin Co., reprinted Dover Publications, 1963, Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter. The Renaissance Print, Yale, 1996, "Grove", "Giovanni Antonio da Brescia" Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 19 Jan. 2017, subscription required Sheehan, Jacquelyn L., in: Jay A. Levinson (ed.) Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Catalogue), 1973, LOC 7379624 Zucker, Mark J., in K.L. Spangeberg (ed), Six Centuries of Master Prints, Cincinnati Art Museum, 1993, Further reading A. M. Hind: Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue with Complete Reproduction of All the Prints Described Vol. V (London, 1948), pp. 33–54 M. J. Zucker: Early Italian Masters (1980), Commentary (1984), 25 [XIII/ii] of The Illustrated Bartsch, ed. W. L. Strauss (New York, 1978–) D. Landau and S. Boorsch (eds), Mantegna, exhibition catalogue Royal Academy and Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992, pp. 57–61 Year of birth missing Year of death missing Artists from Brescia Italian engravers Renaissance engravers 15th-century births 16th-century deaths