Descripción
A SUPERB COLLECTION OF EXTRASIZE PLATES. FIRST EDITION. Elephant folio (69x47,5cm). A leaf of text and a total of 28 enormous engraved plates including the title-plate and the equestrian portrait of the Grand Duke of Tuscany Francesco I, 8 of which are double-paged. Contemp. quarter leather and marbled paper, spine rather wormed and worn, especially towards the caps, little flaws to the corners of the covers. Very fine internally: the engravings are spotless, crisp, clean and really bright. An excellent copy, rarely found in such good condition. A splendid monumental volume of very large prints of the frescoes at Poggio a Caiano, Florence, illustrating the history of the Royal Tuscan familiy, particularly Lorenzo the Magnificant (1469-92). All plates are signed with names of source-artists, draughtsmen and engravers. The first two, unnumbered plates are signed as designed and drawn by Giuseppe Zocchi and engraved by Carlo Faucci or Carlo Gregori. For plates numbered I-XII source artists were Giovanni da San Giovanni, Cecco Bravo, Ottavio Vannini, Franco Furino; the draughtsman, Giovanni Elia Morghen; the engravers, Felice Polanzani, Johann Gottfried Seutter, Georg Martin Preisler, Carlo Gregori, Antonio Faldoni, G.E. Morghen or Carlo Faucci. For plates numbered 1-6 the source artist was Baldasare Franceschini Volterrano; the draughtsman, Morghen; the engraver, Giuliano Giampiccoli. For the last nine, unnumbered plates the source artists were Giovanni Battista Pittoni, Antonio Canal, Giovanni Battista Cimaroli, Donato Creti, Nunzio Ferraiuoli, Fracesco Monti, Domenico Valeriani, Giuseppe Valeriani, Giuseppe Orsoni, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci or Antonio Balestra; the draughtsman was Domenico Maria Fratta, and the engravers were Dauphin Beauvais, Laurent Cars, Bernard Lepicié, Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, Louis Desplaces, Charles-Nicolas Cochin or Nicolas Tardieu. The frontispiece portrait carries the dedication from Andrea Gerini to Francesco I, Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany. Plate IX carries the publication date '1746'. Plates numbered I-XII, captioned in Italian, show paintings depicting actions of Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-92) - apart from plates XI, XII, which are uncaptioned and show four bas-reliefs. These twelve are signed as after paintings by Giovanni da San Giovanni, Cecco Bravo, Ottavio Vannini and Franco Furino; who were working at the Pitti Palace from 1635 to about 1642. Plates 1-6, captioned in Italian, show paintings depicting actions of various members of the Medici family. These are all signed as after paintings by Baldassare Franceschini il Volterrano and Alessandro Allori (which he had begun for Don Lorenzo de' Medici's Villa Petraia in 1636 and completed about 1648). The final nine unnumbered plates form a separate group. Each is inscribed 'Mac.S', and shows the tomb of some celebrated person, surrounded by allegoric figures, and is captioned with a quotation from Lucretius, Vergil or other Latin poet. They are signed as after paintings by Pittoni, Canal, Cimaroli, Creti, Ferraiuoli, Mirandol, Monti, Valeriani, Valeriani, Orsoni, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci and Balestra. They are possibly versions of the nine plates published in 1741 under the title Tombeaux des princes, grands capitaines et autres hommes illustres, qui ont fleuri dans la Grand-Bretagne vers la fin du XVIIème et le commencement du XVIIIème siècle - a set of nine plates published after a series of twenty-four paintings of British celebrities commissioned by Owen Swiny (MacSwiny) from that group of artists. This set includes Pittoni's celebrated allegoric monument to Sir Isaac Newton, showing the prismatic demonstration of the heterogeneity of sunlight. Brunet, IV, 680; Berlin Kat. 4104; On Swiny's Tombeaux see G. Knox, '"The tombs of famous Englishmen" as described in the letters of Owen McSwiny to the Duke of Richmond', in Arte Veneta, 37 (1983), p.228- 35; B. Mazza, 'La vicenda dei "Tombeaux des princes". 1976, pp. 80-102. N° de ref. del artículo ABE-1651400168368
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