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Image of Gallery in South Kensington
Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level D , Case EO, Shelf 131

Engraving

ca. 1573 (published), 1543 (engraved)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Enea Vico (1523-1567), an engraver, coin collector, author and artist interested in ancient Rome, originally engraved 12 plates of vases and ewers in 1543. Although the lettering on the plates says that they are copied from ancient Roman examples, it may be that Vico also used his imagination in the renderings. After Vico's death in 1567 the copper printing plates for these prints were acquired by Antonio Lafrery (1512-1577), a very successful and print publisher and dealer in Rome. Lafrery reissued the plates in about 1573, adding this image as an extra plate to the beginning, and others at the end of the set for more appeal. These prints, claiming to depict Roman antiquities, would have appealed both to learned local residents and the many visitors who passed through Rome.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Engraving on paper
Brief description
Enea Vico and anonymous engravers, ornamental vase, published by Antonio Lafrery, Italian, ca. 1573.
Physical description
Engraving
Dimensions
  • Plate height: 28.5cm
  • Plate width: 20.8cm
Style
Production
Reissue of earlier plates by Vico from 1543 and reversed copy of Agostino Veneziano, B XIV, 547 and 546.
Subject depicted
Summary
Enea Vico (1523-1567), an engraver, coin collector, author and artist interested in ancient Rome, originally engraved 12 plates of vases and ewers in 1543. Although the lettering on the plates says that they are copied from ancient Roman examples, it may be that Vico also used his imagination in the renderings. After Vico's death in 1567 the copper printing plates for these prints were acquired by Antonio Lafrery (1512-1577), a very successful and print publisher and dealer in Rome. Lafrery reissued the plates in about 1573, adding this image as an extra plate to the beginning, and others at the end of the set for more appeal. These prints, claiming to depict Roman antiquities, would have appealed both to learned local residents and the many visitors who passed through Rome.
Bibliographic references
  • Miller, E., 16th-century Italian ornament prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1999, p. 236 (cat. 68b).
  • Miller, E., 16th-century Italian ornament prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1999, pp. 126-31 (cat. 39).
  • Elizabeth Miller, 'Antonio Lafreri's architecture and ornament volumes: Crossing the boundary between books and volumes of prints in late sixteenth-century Rome', Renaissance Studies, 33 (2019), 761- 788
Collection
Accession number
E.2012-1899

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Record createdDecember 2, 2003
Record URL
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