Disegno della Prospettiva de Portici nella Piazza di S. Pietro in Vaticano..

Magnificent and rare perspective view of St. Peter's, designed to show Bernini's colonnade, recently built under the pontificate of Alexander VII.

It is a replica published by the printing house of Matteo Gregorio De Rossi, of the work that Giovanni Battista Falda engraved for the rival printing house of his cousin Giovani Giacomo De Rossi. 

Anonymous work, it bears the imprint of Matteo Gregorio and the date 1685. The plate could be engraved by Matteo Gregorio himself, as well as by Pietro Paolo Girelli or Tiburzio Vergelli, the main collaborators of the printing house in Piazza Navona. For stylistic reasons we believe that the attribution to Girelli is the most likely option, while it is very far from the style of Vergelli.

Matteo Gregorio 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. The main collaborator of the typography of Giovanni Battista and Matteo Gregorio was a great artist of the caliber of Lievin Cruyl, who used the typography for the translation into print of many of his drawings on Rome. Matteo Gregorio, in constant rivalry with his cousin Giovanni Giacomo (1627-1691) of the printing house alla Pace, had Tiburzio Vergelli carve a collection of the main monuments of Rome inspired - if not copied - by Giovan Battista Falda.

Fine impression, printed on contemporary laid paper, with margins, perfect condition. Example of the second state of two, with Carlo Losi’s address.