Nuova Delineatione della Nobilissima e Famosissima Citta Di Genova

Etching and engraving, 1651, signed in plate by the editorial imprint Piazza Navona da Gio. Domenico Rossi all’insegna di Parigi.

Example in the first state of two, ahead of the correction of the imprint at the top in Gio. Iacomo de Rossi all’insegna della Pace. Magnificent proof, printed on two sheets of contemporary laid paper, with margins, in excellent condition. Folded example, which was kept in album.

Panorama of Genoa dedicated to the Groppallo family, a noble family from Piacenza, whose history and prominence in Genoa is mentioned in the key legend.

It is a direct copy of Baratta's view, made with quicker strokes and many simplifications about ten years later, as evidenced by the presence of the Molo Nuovo begun in 1638 and joined to the cliff below the Lanterna only after 1651. This is an immediate example of how much an urban image, except for rare updates to its objective reality, had a good market circulation, being able to change engraver, publisher and patron in a very short time (cf. Ennio Poleggi, Iconografia di Genova e delle riviere, p. 81).

The map belongs to a small number of double-sheet views of cities published by De Rossi: Genoa, Naples, Venice and Rome. The view of Genoa is listed in the famous Indice delle stampe De' Rossi, the catalog of the printseller, published by Lorenzo Filippo de Rossi: p. 11, sheet A6 described Genova in due fogli reali (cfr. A. Grelle Iusco, Indice delle stampe De’ Rossi Contributo alla storia di una Stamperia romana, 1996).

The four views are absolutely identical in the graphic layout. At the top is the title, in the center is the view, and at the bottom is a long dedication with a heraldic coat of arms in the middle. Three of the four views are anonymous, while the panorama of Rome - dated 1649 - is signed by Dominique Barriere (cf. Barbara Jatta in Roma Veduta, tav. 25).

For stylistic reasons, we believe we can safely attribute all these panoramas to Barriere, a French etcher and specialist in architectural drawing, who arrived in Rome in 1640 and joined the community of French artists in the Urbe. Although he did not occupy a prominent place in the Roman artistic environment of the seventeenth century, he was nevertheless a valid exponent of that large group of French artists present in the city and left a considerable body of engravings, still little known, amounting to over two hundred works including historical, allegorical and topographical inventions.

This work is extremely rare; in addition to the copy described by Poleggi, we have a first state of the map at the British Library [Maps * 21580.(1.)].  At the National Library of Malta [Libr. Ms. 265, vol. II, 100 (33)] there is an incomplete example (only the right side) that however allowed us to catalogue the existence of a second state of the plate, with the imprint of Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi alla Pace at the top (above abrasion), while in the dedication at the bottom remains the original Gio. Domenico Rossi. Due to the history of the de Rossi typography - sold by Lorenzo Filippo and origin of the Calcografia Camerale in 1739 - we can assume the existence of further editions of the view.

Magnificent and very rare panorama of Genoa.

Literature

Christie's (1998): p. 24, n. 1007; Ganado (1994): p. 163, n. 100; Poleggi (1981): p. 81, n. 42.