GRANDIOSE GARDENS
FALDA, Giovanni Battista.
Li giardini di Roma con le loro piante, alzate e vedute in prospettiva, disegnate ed intagliate da Gio. Battista Falda. Nuovamente dati alle stampe ...
Rome, Gio. Giacomo de Rossi, [early eighteenth century?].
Oblong folio (385 x 500 mm approx.), comprising 21 numbered plates (title-page with fleur-de-lys watermark, dedication to Livio Odescalchi engraved by Arnold van Westerhout after Giovanni Battista Manelli, and 14 views by Falda and 5 by Simone Felice); a few marks to title and neat repair to inner margin, some worming to blank outer margins of pll. 2-17 very neatly repaired, some very light marginal damp-staining; overall very good in recent half calf with marbled sides , spine gilt in compartments with red morocco lettering-piece.
Added to your basket:
Li giardini di Roma con le loro piante, alzate e vedute in prospettiva, disegnate ed intagliate da Gio. Battista Falda. Nuovamente dati alle stampe ...
A later impression of these magnificent plates of nine Roman gardens by the influential engraver Giovanni Battista Falda (1643–1678). The plates offer perspectives and bird’s-eye-views of the gardens of the Vatican and Quirinal, and of the villas Medici, Farnese, Ludovisi, Montalto Peretti, Borghese, Celimontana, and Pamphili. Populated with labouring gardeners, well-dressed visitors, barking dogs, and ornate carriages, Falda’s etchings ‘are distinguished by deeply bitten line and shadow in the manner of Jacques Callot and Israël Silvestre, and by accuracy in topographical and genre details’ (Grove Art Online). The magnificent dedication plate, depicting the Garden of the Hesperides, is by Arnold van Westerhout (1651–1725).
The plates were originally published in the 1670s, first appearing in this form around 1683. According to RIBA, earlier examples have a pascal lamb watermark, and later impressions a fleur-de-lys, as here.
Berlin Katalog 3492; Kissner 133; Olschki 16895; Rossetti 4831; Vinciana 4440.
You may also be interested in...
a great chemist KUNCKEL VON LÖWENSTERN, Johann.
Collegium physico-chemicum experimentale, Oder Laboratorium Chymicum, In welchem Deutlich und gründlich Von den wahren Principiis in der Natur und denen gewürckten Dingen so wohl über als in der Erden, Als Vegetabilien, Animalien, Mineralien, Metallen, wie auch deren wahrhafften Generation Eigenschafften und Scheidung, Nebst der Transmutation und Verbesserung der Metallen gehandelt wird, Denen Liebhabern natürlicher Wissenschafften zum ungemeinen Nutzen nunmehro endlich Mit einem vollständigen Register und Vorrede herausgegeben Von Johann Caspar Engelleder.
the rare first edition of a famous chemical handbook, the most important work of the leading german chemist of the second half of the seventeenth century. Partington, devoting pp. 361-77 of vol. II to Kunckel, gives ‘a nearly complete bibliographical account with comment’ (Marie Boas Hall in DSB), with many references to the discoveries contained in this book, including as it does ‘an interesting account of the large laboratory (“gold house”) in Dresden, as big as a church, with furnaces and tall chimneys, of the old manuscripts, and of the harsh treatment of former alchemists who failed to achieve results ... Kunckel had great enthusiasm (es ist die Chymie das edelste Studium in der Welt), ample opportunities for experiment, a capacity for keen observation, great patience and stubborn application - in fact all the qualities which are found in a great chemist. He was a man of transparently honest character, and in such cases where his word is set against that of such men as Leibniz and Stahl, it may be accepted without hesitation’ (Partington).
THE FIRST ILLUSTRATED PLUTARCH PLUTARCH [and Jodocus BADIUS Ascensius (editor)].
Vitae … novissime … longe diligentius repositae, majoreque diligentia castigatae, cum copiosiore verioreque indice, necnon cum Aemilii Probi vitis, una cum figuris suis locis apte dispositis.
First substantially illustrated edition of Plutarch’s Lives, with signs of early reading. First published in this popular translation in Paris in 1514 by French scholar-printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1462–1535) in collaboration with Jean Petit, the text is here accompanied by seventy-eight splendid woodcut illustrations in the manner of Benedetto Bordone (1460–1531), all specifically engraved for this edition and appearing here for the first time.