Loggie di Rafaele nel Vaticano

Copper engraving with stunning early colour. Printed on laid paper with added wove margins. In excellent condition with the exception of some light foxing in the margins. Image size: 22 7/8 x 15 3/4 inches. This beautiful perspective view of Raphael's Loggia, with contemporary colouring of the highest quality from the golden age of the hand-coloured print, served as the frontispiece to the celebrated text, "Loggie di Rafaele nel Vaticano". This arresting print is a general perspective view of Raphael's design for the Loggia at the Vatican, with a large profile portrait of Raphael in a medallion over the entrance to the corridor. The plate served as the frontispiece to the first part of the "Logge di Rafaele nel Vaticano", which depicted the decorative work executed by Raphael and his assistants between 1518-1519 in the Vatican. The project as a whole was carried out by the painter Gaetano Savorelli, the draughtsman Ludovico Teseo, the architect Pietro Camporesi, and the engravers Giovanni Ottaviani and Giovanni Volpato. The plate is remarkable not only as the first important visual record of Raphael's work, but also for the quality of the hand-colouring - the work on this image is, in our opinion, some of the greatest to be produced in Europe during the whole of the eighteenth century: the golden age of the hand-coloured print. The whole series was remarkable not just for the size and magnificent colouring of the prints, but also because of the influence they had on contemporary taste. The decision was made to "borrow" elements from Raphael's Vatican tapestries and insert them where the original frescoes were in too poor a state to be legible. The finished plates therefore represented an amalgam of design elements presented with a crisp freshness of colour that held enormous appeal and stimulated the taste for the "grotesque" in the neo-classical period. Cf. Brunet IV, 1110; cf. Berlin Katalog 4068; Lambert Pattern and Design (V. & A.: 1983), p. 26; "Raphael Invenit: Stampe da Rafaello" (1985) Volpato 1; Raphael: Reproduktions-graphik aus vier Jahrhunderten (Coburg: 1984), p. 104; G. Marini (editor) Giovanni Volpato 1735-1803 (1988) no. 198.…