BELLORI Giovanni Pietro, VETERES ARCUS AUGUSTORUM TRIUMPHIS INSIGNES, Roma, 1690

Description

VETERES ARCUS AUGUSTORUM TRIUMPHIS INSIGNES EX RELIQUIIS QUAE ROMAE ADHUC SUPERSUNT CUM IMAGINIBUS TRIUMPHALISBUS RESTITUTI ANTIQUIS NUMMIS NOTISQUE ILLUSTRATI.

Roma, Ad Templum Sanctae Mariae de Pace [Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi], 1690. 

Large folio (490 x 320 mm), (1-title page), 52 ll. (incl. 5 leaves of text and 47 leaves carrying 49 plates).The 52 numbered leaves include in one sequence leaves of text ( 2, 16-19) and leaves of plates. The plates include an engraved dedication portrait (the book is dedicated by the publisher de Rossi to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII, designed by Pietro Lucatelli), 29 plates  (4-8, 24- 45, 49, 50) signed as drawn and engraved by Pietro Sancti Bartoli. Some light foxing, normally not touching the plates, contemporary full leather binding, with small defect of the head and tail caps as well as to corners. Complete and genuine copy. The printer is named in the colophon: ‘Ex Typographia Io: Francisci de Buagnis’.

 

Comments:

First edition. Bellori, art theorist and historian, was curator and antiquarian of the collections of Pope Clement X and Queen Christina of Sweden, as well as secretary of the Academy of Saint Luke.  In the archaeological field it is worth mentioning the publication, which he wrote together with the Roman engraver Pietro Santi Bartoli, Admiranda romanarum antiquitatum ac veteris sculpturae vestigia (Rome 1693). With the collaboration of Bartoli, Bellori also produced numerous volumes of reproductions and commentary of Roman paintings and monuments.