Sea battle

Engraving, ca. 1550, signed lower right, where we also find editorial imprint ROMAE ANT. LAFRERI, with B monogram within the die.

From a subject by Polidoro da Caravaggio.

Example in the second state of six, before the address of Paolo Graziani.

Magnificent proof, richly toned impressed on contemporary laid paper with watermark "letter M in a shield" (see Woodward nos. 310-312), with wide margins, in perfect condition.

In London, British Museum (inv. 1960,1115.5) is preserved a drawing (mm 242x427, pen, brown and gray ink) showing the same subject, in the same direction. The invention, already attributed by Bartsch to Giulio Romano, has been corrected to Polidoro da Caravaggio by Popham. The copperplate is preserved at the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica (inv. 223/A; Grelle Iusco 1996, p. 462, no. 67-2).

“The engraving takes a naval battle scene from a Roman marble. Various hypotheses have been made for this print, according to some scholars it is derived from a drawing by Giulio Romano, according to others from a drawing by Polidoro da Caravaggio” (translate from C. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento).

Bernardo Daddi (born around 1512 - died in Rome in 1570) is the name attributed to the Maestro del Dado recognizable by a B marked on a die found in several of his works. The Maestro del Dado was a painter and engraver of the school of Marcantonio Raimondi and active in Rome between 1532 and 1550.

He has often been wrongly confused with Beatricetto or Bonasone, while Le Blanc believes he may have been a descendant of Daddi. Otherwise, others identify him with Benedetto Verini, Marcantonio's natural or presumed son on the basis of the BV initials that appear on some of his prints. His true identity, however, remains unknown to this day. An engraver of reproductions of others' works, sometimes executed at the request of Antonio Lafreri, he favored Raphael's models. A virtuoso in engraving technique, he treated sacred, mythological, and allegorical, ornamental subjects.

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).

Bibliografia

C. Hülsen, Das Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri (1921), n. 80; cfr. Peter Parshall, Antonio Lafreri's 'Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, in “Print Quarterly”, 1 (2006); B. Rubach, Ant. Lafreri Formis Romae (2016), n. 352, II/VI; A. Alberti, L’indice di Antonio Lafrery (2010), n. 88, II/VI; Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento (2016), n. V.29; cfr. D. Woodward, Catalogue of watermarks in Italian printed maps 1540 – 1600 (1996); Bartsch XV, p. 228, n. 78.