FROM THE LIBRARY OF VIOLLET-LE-DUC
BIANCONI, Giovanni Lodovico.
Descrizione dei circhi particolarmente di quello di Caracalla e dei giuochi in essi celebrati opera postuma del consigliere Gio. Lodovico Bianconi…
Rome, nella stamperia Pagliarini, 1789.
Folio, pp. XXI, [1], CXXX, [2]; text in Italian and French; illustrated with 20 leaves of plates (7 folding); engraved illustration to title, engraved head- and tailpieces; some light foxing and spotting in places, plate IX slightly browned; overall very good, the plates very clean, in contemporary half calf over paste paper, gilt lettering-piece to spine, edges sprinkled red; skilful restoration to spine, corners neatly repaired; occasional underlining and marginal marks in pencil to the Italian text, book label to front pastedown ‘Ex libris Viollet le Duc’.
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Descrizione dei circhi particolarmente di quello di Caracalla e dei giuochi in essi celebrati opera postuma del consigliere Gio. Lodovico Bianconi…
First edition of this handsome work on the Circus of Maxentius, this copy formerly in the possession of the great French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879).
The Descrizione was composed by the Italian doctor, art historian and antiquarian Giovanni Bianconi (1717–1781), and edited for publication after his death by the archaeologist Carlo Fea (1753–1836). Bianconi purchased artworks in Italy for the Dresden Gemäldegalerie on behalf of Augustus III, elector of Saxony and King of Poland, most famously acquiring Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in 1753. The Descrizione is his most important work, describing what was known until the nineteenth century as the Circus of Caracalla, a complex erected by the emperor Maxentius on the Via Appia in the early fourth century. Second only in size to the Circus Maximus, it is the best preserved in Rome. The work is illustrated with a series of handsome plates by the abbot and architect Angelo Uggeri (1754–1837).
Provenance: with the book label of the famous architect and author Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, restorer of, inter alia, Notre-Dame de Paris, Mont-Saint-Michel, Sainte-Chapelle, and the medieval walls of Carcassonne, also noted for his work on the construction of the Statue of Liberty.
