Ionic capital

Engraving, 1536, dated and monogrammed on plate A.V. 1536.

After a subject by Sebastiano Serlio.

Example in the second state (of four?), with added imprint Ant. Sal. exc.

Magnificent proof, rich in tone, impressed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, in perfect condition.

The engraving belongs to a series of nine unnumbered plates (Bartsch nn. 525-33) first published in 1528 - with an early example of a privilege. Serlio pleaded with Venetian authorities for a privilege for these prints in 1528.

All these plates bear his initials SB (Serlio Bolognese). In 1536, back in Rome, Agostino Veneziano made a series of copies of these plates, which he then sold to Salamanca, who reissued them by adding his own name to the plates and a new numbering sequence.

“In 1528 Agostino Veneziano gave to prints a series of nine engravings derived from Sebastino Serlio's drawings depicting the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian architectural orders. This series of engravings originated as the basis of a much larger publishing project: in an application submitted to the Senate of Venice precisely in 1528 Agostino Veneziano and Serlio requested that they be granted the privilege to print a series of engravings depicting the five orders (with the addition of the Tuscanico and Composito), and "non solo li sopra ditti ordini, ma anchora intendemo stampare varij Edificii in perspicientia et altre varie cose antiche e dilettevoli a qualunque". The privilege was granted for ten years, and the engravings were given to the presses from 1528 with the initials A.V. and S.B., signatures of Agostino Veneziano and Sebastiano Serlio (Bolognese), all bearing the indication of the portrait order "DORICO", "JONICO", "CORINTHIA".  The engravings, to be read in groups of three, depict base, capital and entablature of the three orders. The subjects portrayed do not seem to relate back to clearly recognizable ancient buildings, rather they seem to be derived and assembled from the peculiar characters of the individual orders traced in the ancient Roman remains. Printed for purely "didactic" purposes and not for purely archaeological investigations, by the admission of Sebastino Serlio himself they derive from the conceptions of his master Baldassarre Peruzzi, who had initiated an architectural culture "for images" free from the antiquarian context, one of the first traces that would lead to the formation of the extensive treatises on architectural theory in which many great authors tried their hand throughout the 16th century” (translate from C. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento).

The work is formally partSpeculum 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). 

Bibliografia

Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento (2016), n. II.54A/I; cfr. D. Woodward, Catalogue of watermarks in Italian printed maps 1540 – 1600 (1996); cfr. D. Howard, SS's Venetian copyrights, in “Burlington Magazine” CXV 1973, pp. 512-6; cfr. anche Hubertus Günther, Studien zum venezianischen Aufenthalt des SS in “Münchner Jahrbuch für bildende Kunst” 32, 1981, pp. 42.