Larc de Suse (Arch of Augustus - Susa)

Etching, ca. 1545-50, lacking signature and publishing details.

Bottom left of title: 

Larc de Suse.

Example in the first state of two described by Peter Fuhring, before the number.

The plate belongs to the very rare suite of 18 prints called Arcs et monuments antique, probably made between 1545 and 1549.

For the dating and cataloguing of these engravings, which is far from being easy and completed, we are relying on what Fuhring has argued.

There are some first-state impressions, enriched with brown or gray washes, which, when cut within the copperplate mark, look almost like a drawing. In most of the prints, buildings are identified by a handwritten title, which varies in handwriting and calligraphy.

In the 1550 notice to the reader of Temples, Du Cerceau explains that he has already published "in the books previously issued from our workshop [...] three or four models of this kind of buildings, mixed with some arches and pyramids....". The only suite in which we find temples mixed with arches and pyramids is the one described here, Arcs et monuments antique. The presence of the Pyramid of Vienne thus suggests that the first edition of the suite dates from well before 1550, and probably from before 1549, when Du Cerceau published his first suite of titled prints. This suite provides the first intaglio representation of four ancient French monuments: the Tutelles columns of Bordeaux, the Mausoleum of Glanum, the Pyramid of Vienne, and the Arch of Besançon.

Beautiful impression, with the usual delicate tone of Du Cerceau's etchings, printed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, in very good condition.

Bibliografia

Peter Fuhring, Catalogue sommaire des estampes, in “Jacques Androuet du Cerceau “un des plus grands architects qui se soient jamais trouves en Fance””, Parigi, 2010, pp. 306-307, AM1, n. 6.