MAGGI, Giovanni, ROSSI, Bartolomeo. [with] CAVALIERI, Giovanni Battista

Very good copies of these superb illustrated works, in fine impression on high-quality paper, celebrating the antiquities of Rome. Commissioned by the printer Andrea della Vaccaria, this first edition of Ornamenti di fabriche is a collection of 24 plates some hand-coloured in this copy engraved by the artist Giovanni Maggi (1566-1618), with narrative captions composed by the scholar Bartolomeo Rossi. The illustrations guide the readers through the meanders of Rome towards the discovery of ancient and modern monuments including obelisks with hieroglyphs, the sculpted horses on the Quirinal, Trajan s column, and the more recent catafalques for the funerals of Sixtus V and Alessandro Farnese. Each monument provides the occasion for a snapshot of brief and juicy antiquarian narratives, basking in epigraphic material, vedute , classicism and the charm of ruins. Despite its title, Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae is not strictly a third edition of its namesake original, but a collection of plates from the previous ones (1561, 1562) commissioned by the publisher Lorenzo della Vaccheria, Andrea s father. Produced by Cherubino Alberti and Orazio Santis under the supervision of the engraver Giovanni Battista Cavalieri (c.1525-1601), it provides a magnificent gallery of the most renowned Roman statues such as the Laocoon and Marcus Aurelius on horseback as well as more general sculptures like satyrs, deities, river gods, shepherds, emperors and heroes. Both works are outstanding examples of the genre of Roman print collections so dear to Renaissance humanists and artists. They epitomize the art of vedutismo and perspective, the new science of epigraphy (including hieroglyphs), the achievements of Renaissance classicism, historiography and antiquarianism, and the seed of the picturesque movement of the C18. Whilst they gave the opportunity for arm-chair travelling to learned readers who did not wish to leave their homes, these collections also inspired the sketches and works of painters, engravers and architects and the study of humanists, who had visited seen them in Rome and purchased a memento for reference. A couple of copies are recorded in which I and II are bound together; they may have been sold in that fashion by Andrea della Vaccheria who probably had plates from Cavalieri s work left over from his father s time hence the inconsistent composition of recorded copies.