Domus Aureus. Plate # 16.
Rome: Ludovico Mirri, 1776-1778. Item #05029
Emperor Nero's Golden House
A Spectacular Originally Hand-Colored Figural Decoration
From Mirri's Rare Luxury Colored Issue of the Vestigia delle Terme di Tito
CARLONI, Marco (1742–1796), engraver, after SMUGLEWICZ, Franciszek (1745–1807) and BRENNA, Vincenzo (1745–1820). Figural Decoration from the Domus Aurea. Plate 16 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 18 x 14 inches (457 x 356 mm.). Beautifully matted, framed and glazed in a handsome gilt frame; overall framed size 27 1/4 x 23 1/2 inches (692 x 597 mm.). A fine example, the original colors remarkably fresh and brilliant.
A spectacular originally hand-colored plate from one of the most important and visually sumptuous archaeological publications of eighteenth-century Rome, recording the extraordinary painted decoration discovered in the ruins of Nero's legendary Golden House.
Unlike the predominantly architectural compositions of Plates 9 and 41, the present plate is dominated by a striking figural scene set against an intense blue ground. Four classical figures stand between a solitary column and a leafless tree. Two elegantly draped female figures, one in rose-red and the other in blue-green, each carry an infant; between them appear a partially draped female figure in golden-yellow and a nude male figure wearing a distinctive winged helmet.
The central scene is surrounded by a wonderfully elaborate ornamental border. Against a white ground are arranged fantastic floral and vegetal forms, fan-shaped ornaments, miniature human figures and small figural medallions, all brilliantly heightened in blue, green, red, orange and gold. The combination of classical figures, fantastic vegetation and ornamental invention provides a particularly beautiful example of the ancient Roman decorative vocabulary that became known after the Renaissance rediscovery of these buried interiors as grottesche, or grotesques.
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. The monumental atlas was based upon drawings principally by the Polish painter Franciszek Smuglewicz and the architect and designer Vincenzo Brenna, subsequently translated into etchings and engravings by Marco Carloni. The Smithsonian catalogue confirms Smuglewicz and Brenna as the draughtsmen and Carloni as engraver.
Mirri had obtained permission in 1774 to excavate the ancient rooms beneath the Esquiline Hill, then traditionally identified with the Baths of Titus. He financed the excavations and commissioned artists to make careful records of the surviving painted decorations before further deterioration destroyed them.
The ruins recorded by these artists are now principally associated with Nero's Domus Aurea, or “Golden House,” the vast imperial palace begun following the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64. Following Nero's death in A.D. 68, much of the complex was buried or incorporated into subsequent imperial building projects.
Its rediscovery during the Renaissance profoundly affected European art. Artists descended into the buried chambers—as though entering underground grotte—to study the surviving Roman wall paintings. Their fantastic combinations of architecture, foliage, animals, human and mythological figures and ornamental devices consequently became known as grottesche, or grotesques, and exercised an enormous influence upon Renaissance and later European decorative art.
By the eighteenth century many of these ancient paintings were deteriorating rapidly, giving Mirri's undertaking an importance far beyond its immediate decorative appeal. Smuglewicz and Brenna recorded the interiors at a moment when substantially more of their painted decoration 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 finished individually by hand in watercolor and gouache. Modern research into Mirri's publishing project establishes that approximately thirty hand-colored sets were projected and that subscribers wishing to obtain the colored version were required to reserve it in advance.
The colored impressions were fundamentally different from the ordinary monochrome plates. The outline version omitted much of the internal engraved shading, leaving the watercolor and gouache to provide much of the finished image. Mirri claimed that separate plates were employed for the two versions, although modern scholarship has suggested that impressions for the projected thirty colored sets may instead have been taken before additional shading was added to the copperplates for the monochrome issue.
The coloring was intended to reproduce the appearance of the ancient decoration itself. This is particularly effective in Plate 16: the extraordinary blue ground, flesh tones and brilliantly colored draperies give the impression an almost painterly character and vividly convey the polychromy of the Roman interior. Recent scholarship likewise describes the luxury edition as hand colored in watercolor and heightened with gouache or tempera.
The Vestigia was one of the most ambitious eighteenth-century attempts to record the rediscovered decoration of ancient Rome. Institutional catalogues identify the plates as drawn by Smuglewicz and Brenna and engraved by Carloni, while the work accompanied Giuseppe Carletti's explanatory Le antiche camere delle terme di Tito e le loro pitture.
A magnificent survival from one of the great eighteenth-century publications devoted to the rediscovery of ancient Rome—the brilliant blue ground, large-scale classical figures and exceptionally elaborate grotesque border making Plate 16 one of the most immediately decorative plates in Mirri's celebrated series.
Price: $2,500.00