Vaso con fiori

Etching and engraving, circa 1645/50, finely hand-colored at the time; signed on plate by the editorial imprint Jo. Batt: de Rossi in Navona.

Beautiful proof, printed on contemporary laid paper, restored tear on left side, other minor defects, overall in excellent condition.

Very rare representation of a floral vase, probably derived from a composition by Mario Nuzzi, known as Mario de' Fiori. The work, of which Giovan Battista De Rossi is most likely only the publisher, is not described in the Indice de Rossi, the catalog of the printing house with the imprint alla Pace, as it is printed by the printing house located in Piazza Navona. We have not found the engraving described in any repertory.

Mario de 'Fiori, pseudonym of Mario Nuzzi (Rome 1603 - 1673), was a Baroque painter, greatly influenced the genre painting, Italian and Spanish, of the seventeenth century. The favorite subject of his paintings were the compositions of flowers, a genre in which he became a true specialist, so as to derive the nickname 'Mario de' Fiori'. Student and nephew of Caravaggio's painter Tommaso Salini, he was active mainly in Rome, where his work was in great demand by the noble families of the time. In a Rome that, since the end of the sixteenth century, was experiencing a golden age in the field of medical experimentation and botanical research in the service of the papal court, Nuzzi established fruitful relationships with the academic environment of Cassiano dal Pozzo, promoter of the best botanical illustration, and with the court of the Barberini, where he met the best Roman artists of the time. Nuzzi matured a cultural and scientific refinement that earned him important commissions and collaborations: from the illustrations for the work "De florum cultura", of the Jesuit Giovanni Battista Ferrari, commissioned by Francesco Barberini, to a series of portraits and still lifes for various members of the Barberini family. In the meantime, Nuzzi's floral compositions had progressively lost their Caravaggesque influences and had begun to reveal the influence of Flemish painting, especially Daniel Seghers, while maintaining a certain originality inspired by the Roman Baroque.

Giovanni Battista De Rossi is an exponent of one of the branches of the famous Roman printing house. Towards the end of the sixteenth century began the editorial activity of Antonio De Rossi, who with his sons Giuseppe the Elder and Giulio, founded the printing house that, over the next two centuries and through four generations, held the monopoly of chalcographic production in the city. The workshop had the sign “De Rossi alla Pace”. The history of the De Rossi family is characterized by internal disputes and contrasts that lead to the opening of individual printing houses in competition with each other. Giulio De Rossi's sons, Giuseppe the Younger and Giovanni Battista, nephews of Giuseppe De Rossi the Elder, had founded in 1628 their own workshop in the vicinity - at the corner of Via di Parione and Via della Pace near the church of S. Biagio della Fossa - but in 1635 Giovanni Battista in turn separated from his brother and opened a workshop in Piazza Navona, the third of the family. In 1644, after the death of Giuseppe the Younger, his brother Giovanni Battista became the most direct competitor of his uncle's workshop, the De Rossi alla Pace, now run by his widow along with their children who were then partly still minors. Giovanni Battista's son, Matteo Gregorio De Rossi, continued his father's publishing activity, dedicating himself with success also to the activity of engraver.

A very rare work.

Bibliografia

cf. Francesca Consagra, The De Rossi Family Print Publishing Shop: A Study in the History of the Print Industry in the Seventeenth-Century, Ann Arbor, 1993; Anna Grelle Iusco, Indice delle Stampe De’ Rossi. Contributo alla storia di una Stamperia romana, Roma 1996.