Veteris aquae Claudiæ ex Tiburtino forma

Etching and engraving, 1549, signed and dated on plate at the bottom center. 

Example of the first state of four (cf. Alberti, n. 51) or first state of three (cf. Rubach, n. 281), before the address of Giovanni Orlandi.

Inscribed at the bottom center: "Veteris aquae Claudiæ ex Tiburtino forma; uia portaque Noeuia ac Labicana, nunc Maioris appellatione, notissima; seruatis architecturæ legibus, et eadem in anteriore exterioreque parte, uncialium litterarum inscriptione repetita, nobilis”.

The monument has a double arch. Its function was to allow the Claudio Aqueduct to cross the Labicana and Prenestina streets. According to Spagnesi, the sixteenth-century representations of the Lafréry and Serlio arches differed in the fact that "the former used perspectives with a central vanishing point for the orthogonal ones at the projection plane, without direct elements of measurement of the subject: a constant throughout the fifteenth century from Brunelleschi to Giuliano da Sangallo. It is no coincidence that the same Lafrerian view of the Porta Maggiore seems in some way derived from the latter's drawing. The second, on the other hand, engaged orthogonal projections with precise metric scales, and relegated the perspective to the corners of the frames and the interiors of the arches to suggest depth, to hint at spaces, not to render an object in three dimensions". The Lafréry edition is taken from the one published by Antonio Salamanca in 1538 (cf. Marigliani III.9).

The work belongs to the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the earliest iconography of ancient Rome. 

The Speculum originated in the publishing activities of Antonio Salamanca and Antonio Lafreri (Lafrery). During their Roman publishing careers, the two editors-who worked together between 1553 and 1563-started the production of prints of architecture, statuary, and city views related to ancient and modern Rome. The prints could be purchased individually by tourists and collectors, but they were also purchased in larger groups that were often bound together in an album. In 1573, Lafreri commissioned a frontispiece for this purpose, where the title Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae appears for the first time. Upon Lafreri's death, two-thirds of the existing copperplates went to the Duchetti family (Claudio and Stefano), while another third was distributed among several publishers. Claudio Duchetti continued the publishing activity, implementing the Speculum plates with copies of those "lost" in the hereditary division, which he had engraved by the Milanese Amborgio Brambilla. Upon Claudio's death (1585) the plates were sold - after a brief period of publication by the heirs, particularly in the figure of Giacomo Gherardi - to Giovanni Orlandi, who in 1614 sold his printing house to the Flemish publisher Hendrick van Schoel. Stefano Duchetti, on the other hand, sold his own plates to the publisher Paolo Graziani, who partnered with Pietro de Nobili; the stock flowed into the De Rossi typography passing through the hands of publishers such as Marcello Clodio, Claudio Arbotti and Giovan Battista de Cavalleris. The remaining third of plates in the Lafreri division was divided and split among different publishers, some of them French: curious to see how some plates were reprinted in Paris by Francois Jollain in the mid-17th century. Different way had some plates printed by Antonio Salamanca in his early period; through his son Francesco, they goes to Nicolas van Aelst's. Other editors who contributed to the Speculum were the brothers Michele and Francesco Tramezzino (authors of numerous plates that flowed in part to the Lafreri printing house), Tommaso Barlacchi, and Mario Cartaro, who was the executor of Lafreri's will, and printed some derivative plates. All the best engravers of the time - such as Nicola Beatrizet (Beatricetto), Enea Vico, Etienne Duperac, Ambrogio Brambilla, and others  - were called to Rome and employed for the intaglio of the works.

All these publishers-engravers and merchants-the proliferation of intaglio workshops and artisans helped to create the myth of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the oldest and most important iconography of Rome. The first scholar to attempt to systematically analyze the print production of 16th-century Roman printers was Christian Hülsen, with his Das Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri of 1921. In more recent times, very important have been the studies of Peter Parshall (2006) Alessia Alberti (2010), Birte Rubach and Clemente Marigliani (2016). 

Magnificent proof, prinetd on contemporary laid paper with watermark “shield with three mountains and tree” (Woodward nn. 131-135), trimmed to the copperplate, in excellent condition.

Bibliografia

B. Rubach, Ant. Lafreri Formis Romae (2016), n. 281, I/III; A. Alberti, L'indice di Antonio Lafrery (2010), n. 51, I/IV; cfr. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell'Arte incisoria del Cinquecento (2016), n. III.9; C. Hülsen, 1921, p. 147, 24, A; L. R. Mc Ginnis, 1976, n. 90; J. Garms, 1995, ii, p. 484; S. Corsi - P. Ragionieri, 2004, p. 35; P. Spagnesi, 2005, p. 93.