Il Disegno in Prospettiva del Porto di Ancona colle Fabriche del Lazzaretto, e Braccio...

The work depicts the marvelous port of Ancona which has just been restructured, with a project by Luigi Vanvitelli.

Vanvitelli dedicates the engraving to Cardinal Neri Corsini and offers, as a whole, a panoramic view of the general project of the port with the finished construction of the Lazzaretto. Vanvitelli was commissioned to build this building in 1732, at the behest of Pope Clement XII, who had it as part of his program of economic development. For a resumption of international traffic, Clement XII granted the city the free port and financed the works of enlargement and renovation of the port, focused on the realization of three works, which still characterize it today: a new pier, the Molo Clementino, extension of the ancient pier of Trajan; a new lazzaretto, on a large artificial island specially made; a new gateway to the city from the port: the Arco Clementino.

For the dating of the work we can rely on what Scalabroni says: “Petrucci dates back to 1742 the view of the port of Ancona with its lazaretto. But this dating is not acceptable because in the dedication of the work to Card. Neri Corsini, there is mention of della «... Santità di N.S. Clemente XII P.M. fel(iceme)nte regnante...». Pope Corsini, as we know, died in 1740; the date should therefore be anticipated and, in consideration of the date placed at the bottom of the dedication, that is 8 December 1738, placed in that year. In margin to the print it is read besides «incisa nella Calcografia della R.C.A.». Thus also falls the other statement of Petrucci, according to which the first engraving of Vasi printed and published by the chalcography of the Reverenda Camera Apostrolica was the view of the facade of the Basilica Laterana built by Clement XII, on the architecture of Alessio Galilei, which is dated 1741” (see Giuseppe Vasi 1710-1782 (1981); pp. 16-17).

Luigi Vanvitelli was born in Naples on May 12, 1700 from the Dutch landscape painter Gaspar van Wittel (called Vanvitelli) and Anna Lorenzani, daughter of the medallist and man of letters Giovanni Andrea, who the following year took him to Rome where they lived permanently. After an initial apprenticeship as a painter under his father's guidance, accredited by the victory of the third class of painting of the Clementine competition of the Academy of S. Luca in 1716, Vanvitelli deepened the study of architecture thanks to Filippo Juvarra, a friend of his father, attending him at Palazzo Ornani in Piazza Navona, the branch of the court of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. Throughout the pontificate of Clement XII he was active almost exclusively in the provinces of the Papal States as architect of the Reverenda Camera Apostlica, in close collaboration with the general treasurer Carlo Maria Sacripante, in office from 1730 to 1739. As such, in addition to the ordinary activity, mainly concerning hydrostatic systems (aqueduct of Vermicino, port of Fiumicino, bridge of Augustus and port of Rimini, bridge over the Savio in Cesena), since 1733 he dealt with the extraordinary commission of the Braccio Nuovo of the port and the Lazzaretto of Ancona.

Etching, circa 1739, printed on paper datable to the second half of the 1800s, with margins, minimal defects in the central part, slight water marks at the bottom, otherwise in good condition.

Example without the chalcographic stamp, however it seems to be a printing of the Calcografia Regia (about 1870), the new name of the Calcografia Camerale after the Unification of Italy.

Bibliografia

L. Scalabroni, Giuseppe Vasi 1710-1782 (1981); pp. 113-114, n. 403; A. Petrucci, I primi 25 anni del Vasi, in “Urbe” (1742), Maggio, VI, p. 11-12; Giovanni Gori Gandellini, Notizie istoriche degl'intagliatori (1771), p. 347; Lazzarini, Indice delle stampe intagliate in rame a bulino in acqua forte esistenti nella calcongrafia Rev.Camera (1797), p. 21.