British School at Rome: Papers of the British School at Rome (9.1920)

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The British School at Rome.

The latest limit of his activity of which I have any knowledge is not the
work before us, as I had hitherto believed, but 1600.1
Whether this edition is really the first may be considered uncertain.
As Hiibner points out (p. 43) earlier dates appear on some of the plates
(1577 on Nos. 41, 49 : 1578 on No. 69 : 1579 on No. 68—if, indeed, this
plate should not rather be excluded from the original edition2) : while
those plates which represent statues which were formerly in the Della
Valle collection as in the Villa Medici (Nos. 42, 45) must date actually
from 1584, the year of their transference, although the drawings may have
been made earlier.3
As will be seen from Column IV. of Table /?, a considerable number
of Vaccaria’s plates were copied from the Speculum of Lafrery (or, where
Even if Nagler is right, he was only eighteen years old in 1574, and would hardly have been
in the position to write under the dedication Excudebat Romae Franciscus Villamoena,
which would make him out to be the printer or publisher. An examination made by
Mr. Forsdyke of the only copy recorded of Villamena’s edition (British Museum, 155,
No. 7) shows this legend to be a later addition. It must be identical with that which
figures in Vaccaria’s catalogue (Hiilsen, No. 57).
1 In this year he published the plan of Rome by Maggi, with the little views of the
Seven Churches, round it (Hiilsen, op. cit. No. 91) : but he must have already admitted his
son, Andrea, to partnership and have very soon died or given up business : for we find
Andrea’s name as early as 1599 (Bartsch, Peintre-graveur, xvii. 169, 1158) and again, in
1600 (Ozzola in Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, xxxiii. (1910), 405), 1603 (Hiilsen,
No. 98), and 1605 (on the title-page of a reprint of Part 2 of the Venationes of Antonio
Tempesta, dedicated by him to Giovanni Antonio Orsini, Duke of Sangemini in 1598 ;
the name of the original publisher is erased : the set of engravings is not recorded by
Bartsch), besides the later dates given by Ehrle, cit. 59, who also gives a reprint of the
catalogue of engravings published by Andrea and Michelangelo Vaccari in 1614, from the
only known copy at Mantua.
2 This is a plate representing an archer shooting downwards with a crossbow, and
standing with his right foot in the space between the springing of two archivolts, one of
which is represented as broken off at the extremity. Below is the inscription Regij. 1579.
I have a copy of it without the lined background which was added to it when it took its
place in the collection.
3 The purchase of the Della Valle collection by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici took
place on July 15th, 1584, and only a few pieces of sculpture remained in the possession of
the Capranica family (Michaelis, Jahrbuch d. Inst. vi. (1891), 224). Vaccaria has not
indicated in all cases those that were transferred (Nos. 67, 71), which he still mentions as
' ‘ in aedibus Vallensibus ") and, apart from one which actually bears a date anterior to
1584 (No. 69) which was in this collection, we may thus infer that the bulk of the
drawings were made some years before the publication of this edition. This is further
clear from the fact that No. 41, which bears the signature of Cherubino Alberti and the
date 1577, also bears the legend In Viridario Cardinalis de Medicis, which must have ,been
added later. There are indeed some extra proofs before letters of a few of the engravings
in vol. 51-H-23 in the Gabinetto delle Stampe in Rome (Inv. 94888 sqq.) which also contains
a copy of the 1621 edition, broken up and mounted : but I know of no title-page before
that of 1584 which I have described in the text.