Sea battle

Etching and engraving, c. 1550/60, signed at upper left, M. L. cu[m] privilege. Bottom right, within cartouche, polidoro inventor.

From a subject by Polidoro da Caravaggio, presumably a drawing inspired by Trajan's Column.

Example in the first state of two, before Pietro de Nobili's address.

Magnificent proof, richly toned, printed on contemporary laid vpaper with watermark "tulips in a shield with star (see Woodward nos. 124-125), with wide margins, in perfect condition.

Engraved and published by Michele Lucchese (as the indication of the privilege after the signature would indicate), the work flowed - probably was purchased - into the Lafreri printing house. The plate, in fact, together with its pendant, is in Lafreri's inventory (1573, no. 257) described as Due battaglie cauate da fragmenti antichi. The two battles were inherited by Stefano Duchetti; together with the one engraved by the Maestro del Dado, they appear in Duchetti's inventory (1581, no. 32) described as Trei battaglie nauale (cf. V. Pagani 2008a, Annex A) and later in Pietro de' Nobili's catalog (1584) as Battagli navali di polidori pezzi 3 (cf. E. Lincoln 2000, p. 185).

Michele Grechi Lucchesi (active in Rome between 1539 and 1564) was an etcher, engraver, and printer. In documents about him the names Nichele Crechi, Crecchi, Greco, Grechi, Lucchese, da Lucca, Lucano or lucensis, or the monograms M.L. and MI. LV.

His name appears in the Libro delle Arti e Università dei Pittori (Accademia di S. Luca Archives), in which the registration fee of 2 scudi is recorded. In 1551 his presence in the service of Cardinal Sforza is recorded: 'mastro Michael da Luca pittore de Cardinale Santa Fiore'. His prints are dated between 1547-64, some at the request of Giulio Ascanio Sforza: the etching Crucifixion of St. Peter, taken from Michelangelo, and a set of architectural fantasies dated 1547. He made etchings from works by Polidoro da Caravaggio, Raphael, and Peruzzi.

The work belongs to the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the earliest iconography of ancient Rome.

The Speculum originated in the publishing activities of Antonio Salamanca and Antonio Lafreri (Lafrery). During their Roman publishing careers, the two editors-who worked together between 1553 and 1563-started the production of prints of architecture, statuary, and city views related to ancient and modern Rome. The prints could be purchased individually by tourists and collectors, but they were also purchased in larger groups that were often bound together in an album. In 1573, Lafreri commissioned a frontispiece for this purpose, where the title Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae appears for the first time. Upon Lafreri's death, two-thirds of the existing copperplates went to the Duchetti family (Claudio and Stefano), while another third was distributed among several publishers. Claudio Duchetti continued the publishing activity, implementing the Speculum plates with copies of those "lost" in the hereditary division, which he had engraved by the Milanese Amborgio Brambilla. Upon Claudio's death (1585) the plates were sold - after a brief period of publication by the heirs, particularly in the figure of Giacomo Gherardi - to Giovanni Orlandi, who in 1614 sold his printing house to the Flemish publisher Hendrick van Schoel. Stefano Duchetti, on the other hand, sold his own plates to the publisher Paolo Graziani, who partnered with Pietro de Nobili; the stock flowed into the De Rossi typography passing through the hands of publishers such as Marcello Clodio, Claudio Arbotti and Giovan Battista de Cavalleris. The remaining third of plates in the Lafreri division was divided and split among different publishers, some of them French: curious to see how some plates were reprinted in Paris by Francois Jollain in the mid-17th century. Different way had some plates printed by Antonio Salamanca in his early period; through his son Francesco, they goes to Nicolas van Aelst's. Other editors who contributed to the Speculum were the brothers Michele and Francesco Tramezzino (authors of numerous plates that flowed in part to the Lafreri printing house), Tommaso Barlacchi, and Mario Cartaro, who was the executor of Lafreri's will, and printed some derivative plates. All the best engravers of the time - such as Nicola Beatrizet (Beatricetto), Enea Vico, Etienne Duperac, Ambrogio Brambilla, and others  - were called to Rome and employed for the intaglio of the works.

All these publishers-engravers and merchants-the proliferation of intaglio workshops and artisans helped to create the myth of the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the oldest and most important iconography of Rome. The first scholar to attempt to systematically analyze the print production of 16th-century Roman printers was Christian Hülsen, with his Das Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri of 1921. In more recent times, very important have been the studies of Peter Parshall (2006) Alessia Alberti (2010), Birte Rubach and Clemente Marigliani (2016).

Bibliografia

C. Hülsen, Das Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri (1921), n. 153; cfr. Peter Parshall, Antonio Lafreri's 'Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, in “Print Quarterly”, 1 (2006); B. Rubach, Ant. Lafreri Formis Romae (2016), n. 353, I/II.