Nuovo Porto fatto erigere per ordine del Regnante S. P. Leone XII...

Nuovo porto fatto erigere per ordine del regnante S. P. Leone 12: colla veduta prospettica dell'antico palazzo Salviati, ora d'appartenenza della R. C. A.

View of the Salviati palace near the port of Ripa Grande. Title in the lower center. Indication of the engraver in the lower left corner: Paoletti Veneto inc. Rome 1827. In the foreground, the Tiber with some boats; in the background Palazzo Salviati at the Lungara. It refers to the changes made to the port under Pope Leone XII.

Very rare engraving by the Belluno painter Pietro Paoletti, made as soon as he arrived in Rome, called to the papal court at the express request of Leopoldo Cicognara.

The only exemple of the work that we have traced is kept in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome.

Pietro Paoletti was a painter, engraver and decorator, active for many years in Rome at the court of Pope Gregory XVI. He was born in Belluno on September 24, 1801, and was directed to the artistic career thanks to the interest of Count Giuseppe Agosti. In 1819 he went to Padua following the Belluno Giovanni Demin, neoclassical painter, whose school remained for about eight years. At the end of December 1819, joined, but attended only for a year, the Academy of Venice, led by Count Leopoldo Cicognara. At the beginning of April 1826 he received his first important commission: it was from the noble Giovanni Antonio de Manzoni who called him to decorate with scenes from the Orlando Furioso (The Rape of Doralice and Duel of Ruggero and Rodomonte) the summer dining room on the second floor of his villa Crotta, in Agordo, a work that also saw his brother Giuseppe engaged. In 1827 he arrived in Rome and, with the recommendation of Cicognara, was introduced to Cardinal Placido Zurla, of Venetian family, who became his patron. The Roman activity began with the frescoes of the facade of the Lucernari palace (lost) and with those in the chapel of S. Antonio in the church of S. Isidoro (S. Antonio that resuscitates a dead man and S. Antonio that wins the hardness of Ezzelino and his armies). Inserted in the circle of Horace Vernet, director of the Academy of France, he met Francesco Coghetti, Francesco Podesti and Giovanni Battista Caretti sharing the controversy against Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, new director of the Academy after Vernet, who had been until 1834. In Rome he also welcomed Ippolito Caffi, cousin on his maternal side, who had already been his guest in Padua (see Chiara Maraghini Garrone - Paoletti Pietro in "Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani" - Volume 81 (2014).

Etching, printed on contemporary paper, with margins, in perfect condition