Romanae magnitudinis monumenta

Our volume presents two important works that came out of the printing house of the De Rossi family, in the 17th century the largest workshop for the production and trade of artistic prints in Rome, specialized in the descriptions of ancient and modern Rome and its monuments with a worldwide distribution. international.

“Romanae magnitudinis monumenta quae urbem illam Orbis dominam velut redivivam exhibent posteritati veterum recentorumque auctoritate probata quibus suffragantur numismata, et Musea principum praesertim fragmenta marmorea Farnesiana quae urbis antiquae ichnographiam continent restituta et aucta” is the first of the two works: printed in 1699 Cure, Sumptibus ac typis Dominici de Rubeis, Io: Iacobi haeredis ad Templum S.Mariae de Pace, presents 138 plates engraved in copper: the frontispiece, an elaborate architectural composition in which the dedication to Cardinal Hieronymo Casanate is inscribed, 18 plates dedicated to Roman history and its military power, 118 tables of reconstruction of the ancient monuments of the eternal city.

From the description by Cicognara, 3857: “Under each print you can read the declarations engraved in copper; plate 138 are collected in this chalcography and reproduced with this frontispiece, which had previously been used in similar works, as can be seen from the retouched plates, and again numbered to reduce them in this order.” The Treccani Encyclopedia attributes this masterpiece to Pier Santi Bartoli, who is listed as an engraver at the bottom of the dedication table of the work: “Bartoli’s reputation as an architect, or rather as an architectural scholar, is linked to the reconstruction he proposed, in the act of engraving them in copper, of many of the most illustrious monuments of the City. Halfway between the sixteenth-century Speculum by A. Lafréry and the eighteenth-century Antiquities by G. B. Piranesi, Bartoli takes on his behalf, with a preparation and a disposition of spirit closer to the distinctly archaeological one of the first than to the essentially lyrical and in a certain sense dramatic one of the second, the theme of the “magnificence of Rome” and he dissects it with a tenacity and constancy that lasts an entire lifetime, extending it to paintings, tomb lamps, to coins, to ancient gems”. In the 118 plates the monuments of ancient Rome are reproduced in their integrity in engravings with clear and clear lines.

The following work has a completely different character: Vestigi of the antiquities of Rome Tivoli Pozzuolo and other places as they were found in the 15th century, imprinted by Gio. Iacomo de Rossi on the Pace, on the canton, under the sign of Paris, without indication of date (but 1660): the protagonist here is 16th century Rome with views in which the ruins of ancient monuments are inserted as a backdrop to the life of the small figures that animate the scenes. The engraver is Marco Sadeler, a member of the largest and probably best known of the dynasties of Flemish engravers who worked in Europe in the 16th, 17th and following centuries, both as artists and publishers. Marco reproduces a previous work by Aegidius Sadeler, court engraver of Rudolph II, published in Prague in 1606, re-engraving the branches.

In turn, this work was partly a reduced-format reproduction of the work “The vestiges of the antiquity of Rome collected and portrayed in perspective with every diligence by the Parisian Stefano du Perac”, published in Rome by Lorenzo della Vaccheria in 1575. The same 38 views of Rome, preceded by a beautiful figurative frontispiece and a dedication to Matteo Wachker by Wachkenfeld Aulic Councillor, are proposed again in a style richer in chiaroscuro and to them are added 2 views of Tivoli, 7 of Baia and Pozzuoli, 1 of Barland in Zeeland and 1 of Vissehrad Castle in Bohemia.