ZOMPINI Gaetano Le arti che vanno per via nella cità di Venezia.

First edition, an exceptional copy finely coloured and elegantly bound for Antonio Maria Zanetti, who commissioned the work.

Zompini’s most celebrated work, this collection of 60 engravings is an authentic catalogue of the humblest trades and crafts pursued by the working populace of Venice, demonstrates his narrative skill: Zompini obtained a licence to print the volume, which according to the original plan was supposed to contain 100 engravings, on 4 March 1747. The first 40 etchings appeared in 1753 and the next twenty in the following year.

The first edition, of which some copies were delicately hand-coloured by Zompini himself (cat. 188) was small, possibly only 30 or 40 copies. The work did not gain popularity until after Zompini’s death, when the English Resident in Venice, John Strange, acquired the copperplates previously owned by Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, who had played an important role in Zompini’s enterprise and, after his death, that of his heirs.

In 1785 he published a second edition of the collection, with an introductory memoir written by Gianmaria Sasso. The work proved highly popular and further editions followed in 1785 and 1789, and a London edition in 1803. Zompini’s etchings, for which 95 preparatory sketches survive in the Museo Correr in Venice, depict the life of the poorest members of the working class of Venice, most of them peasants who came to the city and took on any kind of work to survive. His engraving style is devoid of formal elegance, and thus very unusual for Venice. His realism makes no concessions to the picturesque; it is very direct and displays the artist’s understanding of, and sympathy for, his subjects.

This book was published at a moment when social tension was increasing in Venice as the gap between the rich and poor widened rapidly; dedicated as it was to the most dispossessed it acquired almost the character of an indictment, and this may explain why it was initially a commercial failure. Connoisseur, collector, patron, publisher and artist, Zanetti was a major figure in cultural circles of Venice. He was especially proud of his print collection (‘[it] exceeds anything that might be expected of a private citizen’. Haskell, Patrons and Painters, p.342), and he published numerous works of prints, most notably by the Tiepolos.

The binding of his copy of Zompini is similar to his copies of Canaletto etchings in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, and Tiepolo Albums in the National Gallery of Art, Washington; it shows his coat of arms with the Habsburg eagle, which he added after 1761 when he was made a count by the Empress Maria Theresa.