Imagines Veteris ac novi Testamenti a Raphaële Sanctio Urbinate in Vaticani Palatii xystis mirà picturae elegantia expressae
[Rome:] Jo. Jacobi de Rubeis[, 1674–1675].
Oblong folio (12 5/8” x 16 3/16”, 322mm x 411mm): with 55 engraved plates: an engraved title-cum-dedication, a portrait frontispiece (of Raphael) and 53 engraved plates, the first unnumbered and then numbered 1-52.
Bound in contemporary half sheep over marbled boards (re-backed in calf).
Re-backed in calf. Rubbed, with wear along the edges. The title-leaf folded back at the fore by some 32mm, with a small chip to the lower fore-corner. Mildly but evenly tanned. Some finger-soiling, and a handful of plates foxed.
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483–1520) was, with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, one of the flowers of the Italian high Renaissance, surpassing the two in esteem in his own age. Whereas Leonardo was seduced to France and Michelangelo tried to hew to sculpting to the best of his ability, Raphael was a thoroughly Italian painter, who enjoyed the patronage of Pope Julius II and Leo X. His stamp on the Vatican is enormous; the present work — with the exception of the first unnumbered pictorial plate, the prophet Isaiah painted 1511–1512 in the Basilica di Sant’ Agostino (often lacking) — records the frescoes Raphael, with his workshop, painted in the loggias (long colonnaded corridors; Greek ξυστός [xustos], the “xystis” of the title) on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace 1518–1519.
Because the corridors were originally open to the elements, the frescoes began to deteriorate, and so Giovanni Giacomo De Rossi (Latinized Ioannes Iacobus de Rubeis; 1627–1691) set about reproducing the fifty-two pictorial elements in the loggia. Beginning with Creation and ending with the Last Supper (the final four elements depict the life of Jesus, viz. the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ and the Last Supper; the previous forty-eight come from the Old Testament), the engravings principally by Cesare Fantetti (who may have been as young as fourteen at the time; the title and frontispiece, along with a handful of others, are engraved by Pietro Aquila) exposed “Raphael’s Bible” to artists and collectors throughout Europe.
Item #JLR0870
Price: $1,800