Aviary of Marcus Terentius Varro at Cassino

Engraving, 1558, titled, signed and dated in plate in lower center ORNITHON / Siue / AVIARIVM / M. VARRONIS / PYRRO. LIGORIO. NEAP. INVE. / ROMAE M. D. L. V. III. / Michaelis Tramezini formis / Cum priuile. Summi pont.

Reproducing the aviary in the Cassino villa of Marcus Terentius Varro. After a subject by Pirro Ligorio.

Example in the only known state, printed by Michele Tramezzino.

As Alessia Alberti suggest, the plate probably did not belong to Lafrery since neither does it appear among the possessions given by S. Duchet to P. Graziani, nor should it have belonged to C. Duchet, who had a copy made by Ambrogio Brambilla in 1581.

Magnificent proof, printed on contemporary laid paper with watermark "six-pointed star in a lozenge inscribed in a circle" (cf. Woodward nos. 289-290), trimmed to copperplate and with contemporary margins added, in excellent condition.

“Pirro Logorio was an architect, painter, antiquarian, art scholar and writer who became interested in archaeology while in Tivoli, while working on the Este villa commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, at the same time directing excavations at Villa Adriana. His experience at Tivoli provided him with the occasion for his treatise on the Antiquities of Rome, published in 1553. In this print Ligorio pictures the aviary (in Greek ornithon, in Latin aviarium) that M.T. Varro possessed at Casinum (now Cassino) and which he himself describes minutely in the third book of De Re Rustica (from which the print takes terms and measurements). Varro (116-27 B.C.E.) initiated a new custom toward animals by considering them, no longer merely as intended for the table, but as decorations of villas in which to entertain his guests. His punctilious distinction between aviaries with a view to profit or, on the other hand, to leisure and contemplation, however, has suggested that with the latter he wants to sketch his ideal of civic life and with the former he wants instead to flog the decadence of public life in the last decades of republican Rome. In the print, where of the aviary rather note the nets that in Varro's Cassinese villa kept the birds in captivity, Pirro Ligorio has only an antiquarian, documentary and archaeological interest” (translation from C. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento).

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. 36/b; cfr. Peter Parshall, Antonio Lafreri's 'Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, in “Print Quarterly”, 1 (2006); B. Rubach, Ant. Lafreri Formis Romae (2016), n. 297; A. Alberti, L’indice di Antonio Lafrery (2010), n. A.121; cfr. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento (2016), n. II.36; cfr, D. Woodward, Catalogue of watermarks in Italian printed maps 1540 – 1600 (1996).