Veduta Generale di Prato

View taken from Viaggio pittorico della Toscana by Francesco Fontani was published for the first time in Florence by the publisher Giuseppe Tofani, between 1801 and 1803.

The work is considered one of the most important and suggestive pictorial books on Tuscany, both for the graphic quality of the engravings and for the large number of places portrayed. In the three folio volumes there are 209 plates, finely etched in aquatint by the brothers Antonio and Jacopo Terreni (active in Livorno and Florence between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century), by Giovanni Pera and others.

Nine of the plates in the series are printed double-page and depict the map of the region, a plan and a view of the main cities: Florence, Siena, Pisa, Livorno. All other plates are printed on single sheet and depict architecture or landscapes related to both major locations and minor centers of Tuscany.

The success of Viaggio Pittorico della Toscana was remarkable, also because of the many reproductions and remakes to which most of its graphic material was subjected, in Italy and abroad. Many other books were, in fact, later illustrated with engravings deriving from the graphics of the Terreni brothers, while a second edition of the work came to light, in a reduced format, in 1817/18.

Aquatint, printed in brown ink on coeval laid paper, wide margins, very slight browning, overall in very good condition.