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These superb engravings are from an influential three
volume publication illustrating 249 vases from important
collections all over Italy. Many of these vases were
housed in the Galleria Clementina of the Vatican
Library. Sadly, many of the vases illustrated in
this work have been lost, making this Italian vase
collection by Passeri not just beautiful, but
illustrations
of lost artifacts gone forever. These drawings
were so well detailed and accurate that scholars were
able much later to identify 30 of the vases which had
come into the possession of the British Museum as the
very subjects from this work. The same 30 vases were to
eventually stir global interest in Etruscan Vases at the
splendid Vases and Volcanoes exhibition at the
British Museum in 1996.
Giovanni Battista Passeri (d1679). was born in Rome and came
to be the antiquary to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He
wrote many treatises touting Etruscan culture to be far
superior to his own; this belief was the inspiration for
this collection of vase engravings. Many of Passeri's
drawings and paintings are in Museums around the world
including the National Gallery of Ireland and the
British Museum. Passeri's studied under Domenichino a
famous Italian Baroque painter.
This work was published almost one hundred years
after Passeri's death by the Monaldini booksellers.
Passeri made 221 engravings of other Etruscan
artifacts as well, it is believed by many that Passeri
wanted these later drawings to be published as volumes
four and five. Unfortunately, those later volumes
were never published as engravings. In
2008 however, Masci M. Emilia published a reproduction
book titled Picturae etruscorum in Vasculis: la raccolta Vaticana e il collezionismo di vasi antichi nel primo Settecentoof
. This book has all of Passeri's published Etruscan drawings
and includes the 221 unpublished engravings.
The engravings are on sumptuous high quality, chain
lined paper with old hand colouring and wide margins.
They are superbly decorative.
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