VIRGIL (engraved portrait, 1739).

VIRGIL (engraved portrait, 1739).The image measures 8.5"x6"inches on a sheet 13"x9". The engraving is very heavy and on a thick paper. |\| FROM: Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, 1613-1696. Veterum illustrium philosophorum, poetarum, rhetorum, et oratorum imagines : ex vetustis nummis, gemmis, hermis, marmoribus, alijsque antiquis monumentis desumptae. Published in Rome, 1739. |\| "Giovanni Pietro Bellori (15 January 1613 19 February 1696),  also known as Giovan Pietro Bellori or Gian Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian, but, more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equivalent to Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century."--Wikipedia |\| "In contrast to most authors of biographical compilations, Bellori was highly selective in the artists he discussed, limiting himself to only twelve major figures: Algardi, Barocci, Caravaggio, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Duquesnoy, van Dyck, the architect Domenico Fontana, Lanfranco, Poussin, and Rubens. The preface to the work (originally delivered as a lecture at the Accademia di S. Luca, Rome, in 1664) became the classic statement of the concept of ideal art. It had a decisive influence on French academic theory and later became the theoretical basis of the Neoclassicism preached by Winckelmann."--Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists.…