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Based on a close reading of Pierre Milan’s and René Boyvin’s engraving of the Nymph of Fontainebleau (c.1545–54), this article addresses the paragone debate underlying the multimedia productions that characterized French Renaissance aesthetics. Despite being a central work of French sixteenth-century art, the engraving has been discussed mostly as a record of a lost painting by Rosso Fiorentino. However, a comparison to closely related works, together with an attentive consideration of the enigmatic relationship between its three components—image, inscriptions, frame—reveals that it is a sophisticated representation with multiple levels of meaning that have not been previously considered, and which are fundamentally concerned with self-reflexive issues of artistic production. The apparent contradictions between the image and the text of the engraving raise art-theoretical questions about fictive illusionistic representation and the status of print as a medium. This article contextualizes these theoretical issues within the historical reception of the paragone in Renaissance France, while examining the ways in which the very nature of sixteenth-century prints—by way of their historical connection to drawing—highlight the diversity between media and provide a particular lens for approaching the questions underlying the comparison between the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]