Born in Carpi (modern-day province of Modena) in ca. 1468/70, Ugo da Carpi was the first Italian chiaroscuro woodcut designer. Active in Venice from around 1509, he produced several woodcuts from small book illustrations to monumental multi-block prints. Concerned with issues relating to authenticity, Ugo usually signed his works, an uncommon practice at that time. In 1516, he petitioned the Venetian Senate for the privilege of having invented the technique of chiaroscuro woodcut. however, it is likely that Ugo developed his method upon seeing earlier German examples. In his prints, Ugo abandoned the traditional cross-hatching manner in favor of the use of tone blocks. In 1516-18, Ugo moved to Rome and executed the majority of his chiaroscuro woodcuts after designs by Raphael and through the intermediary of engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano. After the sack of Rome in 1527, Ugo settled in Bologna where he collaborated with Parmigianino, before dying in 1532.

Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better known as Parmigianino (1503-1540), was an Italian Mannerist painter, draftsman, and printmaker. In Parma and upon his arrival in Rome in 1524, he experimented with print to study works by artists he admired, such as Raphael. He fled Rome at the time of its sack in 1527, and he moved to Bologna. There, he began his engagement with chiaroscuro woodcuts, collaborating with Ugo da Carpi and Antonio da Trento. Parmigianino then returned to Parma in 1530.