Fianco della Strada Giulia dalla parte del Tevere

View taken from a later edition of Vasi s Delle Magnificenze di Roma Antica e Moderna (first edition, in X books, published between 1747-61).

In the first edition of Book V which covered the monuments along the River Tiber and which was published in the first months of 1754, Giuseppe Vasi made use of some copperplates he had engraved in the 1740s for Vedute di Roma sul Tevere, a book covering the same subject, but with views of a smaller size. In the plate shown above Vasi enlarged the original view by adding more sky in the upper part and a larger coverage of Giardino Farnese on the left; the additions are clearly noticeable. The plate was not numbered.

By the end of 1754 Vasi published a second edition of Book V and he replaced the patched view of the river between Via della Lungara and Strada Giulia with a new one which covered also Ponte Sisto and gave more relevance to the buildings along Strada Giulia. In the new edition the plate was numbered as 88, the number previously used for a plate covering Giardino Farnese.

 In the description below this plate Vasi made reference to: 1) Giardino Farnese; 2) Palazzo Farnese; 3) Chiesa dell'Orazione e della Morte; 4) Palazzo Falconieri; 5) Spirito Santo dei Napoletani; 6) S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini; 7) Carcere Nuovo.

Etching, printed in sanguine ink, in excellent condition.

Known by most simply as the "master" of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Giuseppe Vasi reveals in this monumental work the fullness of his graphic creativity.

The 10 books that compose it each have a title page with a different title and date: Libro primo che contiene le porte e mura; Libro secondo, che contiene le piazze principali di Roma con obelischi, colonne, ed altri ornamenti; Libro terzo, che contiene le basiliche e chiese antiche di Roma; Libro quarto che contiene i palazzi e le vie più celebri; Libro quinto che contiene i ponti e gli edifizj sul Libro sesto che contiene la chiese parrocchiali; Libro settimo che contiene i conventi e case dei chierici regolari; Libro ottavo che contiene i monasteri e conservatorj di donne; Libro nono che contiene i collegj, spedali, e luoghi pii; decimo che contiene le ville e giardini più rimarchevoli.

The Magnificences provide a complete and at the same time unconventional panorama of the City: thus, together with the usual, celebrated shots taken from the best tradition of vedutistica, one also finds an unusual Rome, one that, at times, no longer exists. The author had worked on this work, of central importance in Roman publishing in the middle of the eighteenth century, for almost twenty years, producing a monumental guide to the “Urbe” where, alongside the usual and famous shots taken from the best tradition of vedutistica, he also immortalized unusual views that have since disappeared with the change of the city. The text that accompanies the views in the first volume is by Giuseppe Bianchini, in the second by Orazio Orlandi and in the remaining ones by Vasi himself.