Alberto Martini (1876 – 1954) was an Italian painter, engraver, illustrator and graphic designer. Critics have described Martini's range of work from "elegant and epic" to "grotesque and macabre" and consider him one of the precursors of Surrealism. Much of his career was spent illustrating famous literary works. In 1895 he began the first series of illustrations for Luigi Pulci's Morgante Maggiore and for Alessandro Tassoni's La secchia rapita. During this time he had his first exhibit which was a series of fourteen paintings from the anthology La corte dei miracoli at the Venice Biennale in 1897, where his drawings of beggars were described as "picturesquely grotesque". In 1901 he illustrated an edition of La Divina Commedia. Beginning in July 1905, he produced 132 ink illustrations, which were described as "macabre", for the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. His work was clearly influenced by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Urs Graf, Pieter Bruegel, Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Joseph Sattler whose work he had studied. At the outbreak of World War I, Martini designed a series of "frightening" propaganda postcards called Danza Macabra Europea, to be distributed to the allies against the Austro-Hungarian empire.
