Il Toro di Farnese

Etching and engraving, ca. 1680/90. Lettered with the imprint at lower right In Rome da Vincenzo Billy (here erased, reads In Rome only).

Example of the second state, with Billy's imprint abraded.

Beautiful proof, printed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, traces of central horizontal folds, otherwise in very good condition.

Vincenzo Billy was a publisher and engraver belonging to a family of French origin, related to Giacomo (Jacques Belly) and Nicolò Billy, who were related to him in activity, was active in Rome from the late seventeenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century. Repertories are unclear as much about the genre and chronological extremes of his activity as about the relationships that bound him to Nicolò and his sons Antonio and Nicola. As an "engraver and print merchant," he subscribed "near the Orologgio della Chiesa Nuova," "in San Salvatore di Lavoro," and "near Pasquino." As an engraver he worked for the most skilled Roman print merchants, from Giovanni Marco Paluzzi to Vincenzo Billy "at the Chiesa Nuova," from Komarek to the many members of the De Rossi intaglio "at the Pace": vast was his engraving production, sometimes ignored by the repertories or sometimes (except for the generic assignments of Gori Gandellini, 1771, which gives him as collaborator his son Antonio) confused with that of his son Nicola, also because of the identity of signature. The more artisanal than artistic character, the uneven rendering, and the engraving with often crude and hasty strokes, may attribute to Billy a group of prints: religious subjects and portraits in particular.

Very rare.

Bibliografia

Fabia Borroni, BILLY, Nicola, il Vecchio in “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani” - Volume 10 (1968); Ch. Le Blanc, Manuel de l'amateur d'estampes, I, Paris 1854, p. 340, con un elenco di 47 pezzi ascrivibili ai due Nicola Billy.