Domus Aureus. Plate # 41.
Rome: Ludovico Mirri, 1776-1778. Item #05028
The Painted Splendor of Nero's Golden House
A Magnificent Originally Hand-Colored Architectural Decoration
From Mirri's Rare Luxury Colored Issue of the Vestigia delle Terme di Tito
CARLONI, Marco (1742–1796), engraver, after BRENNA, Vincenzo (1745–1820). Architectural Decoration from the Domus Aurea. Plate 41 from Vestigia delle terme di Tito e loro interne pitture. Rome: Presso Ludovico Mirri, 1776–1778.
Original etching and engraving with contemporary hand coloring in watercolor and gouache, from the rare luxury colored issue.
Plate mark 23 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches (597 x 317 mm.). Finely matted and housed in a handsome gilt frame; overall framed size 32 x 21 inches (813 x 533 mm.). A fine example, the original colors remarkably fresh and brilliant.
A superb originally hand-colored plate from one of the most spectacular archaeological publications of eighteenth-century Rome, recording the extraordinary painted decoration discovered in the ruins of Nero's legendary Golden House.
The composition presents an elaborate architectural decoration beneath a great semicircular arch. Against a dramatic black ground rises a perfectly balanced arrangement of slender columns, pediments, niches and architectural panels in terracotta, ochre, green and white. A classical female figure occupies the central niche, while two further figures stand upon elevated platforms at either side. Delicate candelabra, garlands, urns and fantastical ornamental motifs complete the design.
The extraordinary contrast between the deep black ground and the brilliant terracotta, gold, green and white of the architecture gives this plate an especially striking decorative presence. Its elaborate combination of imaginary architecture, classical figures and delicate ornament epitomizes the ancient Roman decorative vocabulary that became known in Renaissance Italy as the grottesche, or grotesques.
The subject can be identified more precisely as the decorative scheme of the lunette of a room in the so-called Baths of Titus. Modern scholarship reproduces this very plate as Partiti decorativi della lunetta di una sala nelle Terme di Tito and identifies it specifically as “V. Brenna disegno, Carloni incise”—Vincenzo Brenna responsible for the drawing and Marco Carloni for its engraved translation.
The plate comes from Vestigia delle terme di Tito e loro interne pitture, published in Rome by the antiquarian and art dealer Ludovico Mirri beginning in 1776. Mirri had obtained permission to excavate the ancient rooms beneath the Esquiline Hill, then traditionally identified with the Baths of Titus. He commissioned Vincenzo Brenna and the Polish painter Franciszek Smuglewicz to make painstaking records of the surviving decorations, which Marco Carloni subsequently translated into etchings and engravings. Contemporary documentation quoted by Treccani records that Brenna was specifically responsible for the ornament, architecture and internal plans—an attribution particularly appropriate to the present architectural plate.
The ancient rooms were at the time believed to form part of the Baths of Titus, hence the title of Mirri's publication. They are now principally associated with the Domus Aurea, or Golden House, the immense palace complex constructed for the Emperor Nero following the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64.
Following Nero's death in A.D. 68, much of the complex was deliberately buried or incorporated into subsequent imperial construction. When its subterranean rooms were rediscovered during the Renaissance, artists descended into them as though entering caves or grotte. The fantastic painted ornament found upon their walls consequently became known as grottesche—the origin of the term “grotesque”—and exercised a profound influence upon Renaissance and later European decorative art.
By the eighteenth century many of the ancient paintings were deteriorating rapidly. Mirri's excavations and the resulting Vestigia therefore preserved a visual record of decorations at a time when substantially more remained visible than survives today.
Of particular importance, the present plate belongs to Mirri's rare luxury hand-colored issue. The Vestigia was produced in two forms: a conventional monochrome version and a special version printed in outline and intended from the outset to be individually finished by hand in watercolor and gouache. Only approximately thirty colored sets were projected, with subscribers required to reserve this more costly version in advance.
The resulting impressions have an entirely different character from the ordinary monochrome plates. Rather than merely embellishing a finished engraving, the watercolor and gouache provide much of the finished image themselves, effectively transforming Carloni's lightly printed outlines into individual paintings on paper.
A magnificent survival from one of the great eighteenth-century publications devoted to the rediscovery of ancient Rome—an exceptionally decorative originally hand-colored engraving preserving the painted architectural splendor of Nero's Golden House.
Price: $2,250.00