FRANZINI Girolamo Antiquitates Romanae urbis studio.

See Kat. Berlin, 1861 (only a 1660 edition). 

A charming collection of woodcuts depicting the wonders of the Eternal City. The fourth part illustrates sculptures from the most important Italian collections, including one of the oldest representation of the Laocoon. 

Born in Brescia, Girolamo Franzini (1537-96) moved to Rome around 1570 to work as a printer and publisher, while maintaining commercial relations with Venice and working in both cities. He specialized in producing works on the city of Rome and its monuments. ‘The history of his publishing house was decisive in the development of a specific type of Roman guide’ (Schudt, Guide di Roma, p. 32).

In 1588, Girolamo Franzini published, curiously enough in Venice, the first edition of Cose meravigliose dell’alma città di Roma, illustrated with 143 small woodcuts depicting the churches of Rome before the great transformations of the seventeenth century. Franzini’s edition also differed from previous editions of Mirabilia Romae in terms of content: while retaining the well-established structure of the Cose meravigliose, he had the text developed and updated by the Augustinian friar Santi Solinori da Monte San Savino, with references to modern Rome and the pontificate of Sixtus V.

Aimed at the international religious pilgrimage market, it explains how to see Rome’s main sites, parishes and antiquities, including obelisks and columns. For pilgrims, it included a list of churches that function as stations for indulgences and a treatise on ‘how to win indulgences at the stations’. For tourists, he proposed a three-day programme of visits, because ‘for those who wish to see the marvellous antiquities of Rome, it is necessary to proceed in order, without doing as those who look at one thing, then another, and end up leaving having seen only half of it’. The final section includes useful factual information, such as chronological lists of popes and emperors, parishes and confraternities, and a brief outline of the customs of ancient Rome.

This charming collection of engravings, published without text in four separate parts, consists of Antiquitates Romanae Urbis; Templa Deo et sanctis eius Romae dicata; Palatia procerum Romanae Urbis and Icones statuarum antiquarum Urbis Romae.

Probably produced by Franzini himself, the illustrations depict ‘extremely schematic monuments’, with a simplicity that ‘imitates the images of sculpture and architecture on ancient coins’ Tschudi, Baroque Antiquity, 55.

This publication was a sort of pocket guide for tourists and lovers of antiquities, accompanying the images with the usual captions: the name of the subject and its place of preservation; the prints were in fact assembled according to the collection to which the sculptures belonged.

These engravings were constantly used to illustrate guidebooks to Rome for over 100 years.

‘These Franzini blocks were extremely popular and used for the illustration of many guides to Rome for more than a hundred years. Many of the prints in these volumes were however never used elsewhere, and they form an important record of the monuments, palaces and churches that could be seen in Rome at the end of the 16th century’ (Kissner Collection of Books on Rome).

A very fine copy in contemporary limp vellum, consisting of Franzini’s new edition of 1599 for the Antiquitates, and the first of 1596 for the following three parts. It is illustrated with a total of 387 (out of 388) woodcuts.

This collection is extremely rare, and we have only been able to trace one other copy offered for public sale in the last 20 years with as many engravings. The copy from the Kissner collection, sold by Christie’s on 3 October 1990, was described as ‘unusually complete’, but nevertheless incomplete with 38 illustrations.