Books and Manuscripts

Pietro, and Michelangelo La Chausse
La pitture antiche delle grotte di Roma e del sepolcro de' Nasoni...
Roma: Gaetano degli Zenobi, 1706. Folio, 14 5/8 x 9 3/8 in. (371 x 238 mm). (viii), (iv), 63 pp. Illustrated with 75 engraved plates by Giovanni Pietro Bellori, and his son, Francesco, and with the woodcut arms of Pope Clement XI on title-page. Contemporary full vellum, spine labels perished, vellum soiled, spine ends and corners worn; speckled red edges; 20th century ownership signature on front paste-down, book-plate of the Royal Society of Literature on same and crossed out in purple pencil and noted “sold”; scattered minor soiling in margins; small loss in corner of pl. XXI, just touching image.

A reprint of the 1680 publication by Italian antiquarian and art theorist Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Italian engraver Pietro Santi Bartoli's work on the Roman Tomb of the Nasonii family. Constructed in the second century AD, the tomb was discovered during the expansion of the Via Flaminia in the late 17th century. Over the ensuing years the mausoleum suffered severe damage and looting, and Bartoli's engravings, executed just after it was discovered, serve as the only extant visual record of the tomb before its degradation.