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PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista (1720-78). Vedute di Roma . Rome: Bouchard and Gravier, [c. 1758-59].
PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista (1720-78). Vedute di Roma . Rome: Bouchard and Gravier, [c. 1758-59]. Large 2 o (515 x 370mm). 53 ETCHED PLATES including title and frontispiece of classical fantasy and ruins and 51 views of modern and ancient Rome, all full broadsheets mounted on stubs. (A few light creases and very minor soil-marks, light browning at the extreme lower end of the center folds.) Mid-19 t h -century English binding of red half morocco over thick pasteboard, triple gilt fillet on sides, spine gold-tooled in compartment to floral patterns, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, (somewhat rubbed). Provenance : Acquired from Craddock and Barnard 1958. RARE AND EARLY ISSUE OF PIRANESI'S POPULAR MASTERWORK, which grew over thirty years from the first etchings in the mid-1740s to 135 plates at the time of the artist's death. Bought on the Grand Tour and widely distributed through trade channels, then restruck in Paris, these famous prints came to form the European image of the eternal city until well after Napoleon's defeat and the arrival of photography. Andrew Robison, with "Dating Piranesi's early 'Vedute di Roma'" in Piranesi tra Venezia e l'Europa (ed. A. Bettagno, Florence 1983) pp. 11-33, has analyzed their evolution, order and dates, and clearly placed the Vershbow set (Robison no. XI) within the early sequence of issues in the work's complicated publication history. He calls it "a rebound but coherent volume of 53 appropriately early impressions," and compares it to another set (in Munich) of just the same vedute but here with the addition of the Palazzo Barberini view (reproduced by him as fig. 13), which completes Piranesi's early survey of modern Roman palaces. The following list of contents follows the manuscript numbering (occasionally cut into) in the top right-hand corner of the blank reverse of the sheets, which precedes the binding but whose order was maintained by it. The states may be summarized as 32 in finished states before all addresses and 21 with the address of Bouchard or Bouchard and Gravier, including 17 states unrecorded by Hind (see Andrew Robison, "The 'Vedute di Roma' of Giovanni Battista Piranesi Notes toward a Revision of Hind's Catalogues," Nouvelles de l'Estampe , 1970, no. 4, pp. 180-98). ALL ETCHINGS IN FINE IMPRESSIONS, the paper crisp, unwashed and unpressed. 1. H1 title - first state 2. H2 frontispiece - first state 3. H3 St. Peter's Square - third state 4. H4 Interior St. Peter's - second state 5. H5 exterior St. Peter's - first state 6. H6 St. Paul's Outside the Walls - first state 7. H7 interior St. Paul's Outside the Walls - second state 8. H8 St. John Lateran - second state 9. H9 St. Mary Major - second state 10. H10 rear St. Mary Major - pre-first state, before publishers' address 11. H11 Holy Cross in Jerusalem - pre-first state, before publishers' address 12. H14 Popolo Square - second state 13. H15 Monte Cavallo Square - second state 14. H22 Consulta Palace - first state 15. H25 Barberini Palace - first state 16. H19 Trevi Fountain - second state 17. H21 Fountainhead of Paola Aqueduct - first state 18. H38 Capitoline Hill - intermediate state between first and second 19. H23 Montecitorio Palace (Papal Law Courts) - pre-first state, before Piranesi's address 20. H26 Odescalchi Palace - pre-first state before publishers' address 21. H24 French Academy (Salviati-Mancini Palace) - pre-first state before publishers' address 22. H16 Navona Square - intermediate state between second and third 23. H17 Rotonda Square and Pantheon - second state 24. H18 Spain Square and Spanish Steps - intermediate state between second and third 25. H51 Trajan's Column - first state 26. H52 Column of Antoninus Pius [ recte Marcus Aurelius] - second state 27. H53 Egyptian Obelisk - first state 28. H27 Gran Ripa (Great Embankment) - pre-first state before publishers' address 29. H28 Ripetta (Small Embankment) - second state 30. H29 Bridge and Castle of the Holy Angel - intermediate state between first and