Antonine column and obelisk of the Mausoleum of Augustus

Engraving, ca. 1550, signed lower right: Ant. lafrerij formis.

Counterpart copy of engraving attributed to Enea Vico, published by Antonio Salamanca's printing house.

https://www.antiquarius.it/it/lafreri-speculum-romanae-magnificentiae/13902-colonna-antonina-e-panorama-di-roma.html

Example of the only state know by Alberti, of the second state of two, with Lafreri's imprint, according Rubach, who describes a first state of the plate, preserved at the BAV (Cicognara XII, 3886, fol. 12).

Magnificent proof, rich in tone, impressed on contemporary laid paper with "crossbow in the circle" watermark (cf. Woodward, nos. 205-213), trimmed to copperplate, in excellent condition.

Inscription on the base of the column: "COL. ANTONINI".

“This print is the exact counterpart of the Salamanca print and its landscape, which is a collage of Roman buildings: Castel sant'Angelo, the walls, the bridges over the Tiber, Tiber Island, San Pietro in Montorio...the she-wolf, the personification of the Tiber. The obelisk is moved forward so that the column appears to surpass it in height. The example reproduced here can be considered, although in counterpart, to be derived from the engraving of Enea Vico, the author from examination of the graphic style, could be Nicolas Beatrizet.   Of great effect is the rendering of the background with the bridges in perspective from Ponte Santa Maria to Ponte Sisto” (translation from C. Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento).

A peculiarity of this engraving is that, in the lower right-hand corner, just above the publisher's imprint, appears the figurative attribute of the bird's wing; this attribute is also present in the mirror engraving published by Salamanca and has led some scholars to attribute the plate to a phantom Master of the Bird's Wing.

The attribution to Beatrizet by Margliani, although not supported by any other scholar, seems entirely plausible. The graphic style is reminiscent of other engravings by the artist, of even higher quality than Vico's prototype. The print is still attributed to Enea Vico in the catalog of the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica 

https://www.calcografica.it/stampe/inventario.php?id=S-FC70348

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. 31/f; B. Rubach, Ant. Lafreri Formis Romae (2016), n. 289, II/II; A. Alberti, L’indice di Antonio Lafrery (2010), n. 56; Marigliani, Lo splendore di Roma nell’Arte incisoria del Cinquecento (2016), n. IV.20; cfr. D. Woodward, Catalogue of watermarks in Italian printed maps 1540 – 1600 (1996); The Illustrated Bartsch, n. 418, copia.