Born in Mantua in ca. 1559, Andrea Andreani was the most accomplished practitioner of chiaroscuro technique in late sixteenth-century Italy. Little is known about his initial training. He began as a blockcutter. Around 1583, he started to copy early line woodcuts into new chiaroscuro versions. He also reproduced intarsia pavements, sculptures, and bronze reliefs with the same method. Andreani was active in Rome (ca. 1580), Florence (1583-86), and Siena (1586-1593), before returning permanently to his native city and setting up a workshop. He died in Manuta in 1629. Andreani's oeuvre includes large prints comprising several sheets, such as his copy of Triumph of Christ after Titian, and copies of drawings based on Mantegna's cartoons for the Triumph of Caesar. Between 1602 and 1610, Andreani reprinted and recut earlier chiaroscuro woodblocks by Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento and Niccolò Vicentino, bringing them to new levels of technical and visual refinement.

Born in Verona ca. 1543, Jacopo Ligozzi was an Italian Mannerist painter and designer, and a disciple of the artist Paolo Veronese. After a brief sojourn in the Habsburg court in Vienna, he moved to Florence in 1577. there he worked as a painter for the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de' Medici, and he was also conferred the title of superintendent of the Ducal Gallery. Ligozzi was best known as a scientific draughtsman making studies of plants and animals for the Medici court. He died in Florence in 1632. Andrea Andreani executed several woodcuts after his works.