Bacchus visiting the poet Icarius.

Lot n° 268

Rome, Antonio Lafreri, 1549

Engraving, 33,5 x 50 cm, laid paper mounted on 19th-c. thick paper, unsigned, dated in the plate (sl. soiled, trimmed to borders, some text in lower margin restored in pen and ink, sm. restored tears near edges).

After an antique marble relief found in Rome, and originally part of the sculpture collection of Giuliano della Rovere (Pope Julius II) at the Belvedere Cortile, which functioned as a proto-museum for Renaissance artists studying antiquity. The original relief is now part of the collection of the British Museum (inv. nr.: 1805,0703.123), where it inspired William Blake. The print was part of the large print project started in the 1540s known as the "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae". The French Fontainebleau engraver Nicolas Beatrizet provided Lafreri with the majority of his engravings after sculpture, which makes this engraving attributable to the artist.
Caption lettered across bottom of image "Triclinarium lectorum tripedis.../...Romae MDXLVIIII". Early state before publ. address of Lafreri.
Ref. Peter Parshall, "Antonio Lafreri's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae", Print Quarterly 2006, pp. 3-28. - Christian Huelsen, "Das Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae des Antonio Lafreri", 1921, no. 46a. - R. Zorach (ed.), "The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae", Chicago 2008. - http://spec-ulum.lib.uchicago.edu.