Tavola di Aggiunta che contiene la Pianta di Roma e l'indicazione de' punti principali del Panorama...

This “Tavola di Aggiunta” is a key plate (470 × 695 mm platemark, 540 × 760 mm sheet), identifying 143 sites depicted in the “Veduta generale della città di Roma presa dal Monte Aventino” on three sheets  dependent on drawings made by  Wilhelm Friedrich  Gmelin from his own garden on the Aventine Hill. The left panel of the three-sheet panorama depicts the Tiber from the Porto di Ripa to the Ponte Palatino; the centre panel continues from the Tempio di Vesta to the Chiesa di Santa Anastasia; and the third from the Monte Palatino to the Terme di Caracalla. The principal sites depicted in each panel (51, 57, 35 respec­tively) are identified on the  accompanying ‘Tavola di Aggiunta’.

Born in the Black Forest and a pupil for ten years of Christian Mechel in Basel, Wilhelm Friedrich Gmelin established himself in Rome in 1787, and he worked there or in Naples until his death in Rome on 22 September 1820, producing a large number of sepia drawings of places in and around Rome, some of which he engraved and published himself. In the summer of 1829, various drawings made by Gmelin at the very end of his life were obtained by a young German printmaker, newly arrived in Rome, Wilhelm Noack (1800–1833). According to family tradition, Noack conceived the idea of transforming some of these drawings – supplemented by numerous direct observations of his own – into a panorama.

Two panels were etched before Noack’s death (17 September 1833), of which one – lettered Veduta di Roma dall’Aventino | W.F. Gmelin Del. Roma 1820 | W. Noack inc – was separately published (and later reused as the left sheet of the panorama). The project then fell into abeyance, until completed more than a decade later by Agostino Penna (fl. Rome 1827–1846), a versatile draughtsman