Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Jerome

Palma was also a frequent etcher in the same swift, animated style of his pen studies. His most sustained and influential project was an instruction manual of drawing based upon his etched plates. Carrying the technique beyond the careful description of Battista Franco––though well short of the eccentricity and expressiveness of Schiavone––such efforts helped establish the principles and determine the language of conventional Italian etching through the next century.