Serie di LXXXV. disegni in varie grandezze composti dal celebre pittore Salvator Rosa publicati ed incisi da Carlo Antonini by ROSA, Salvator (1615-1673) - 1780

Rome: nella Stamperia dei Casaletti, 1780. Large folio (498 x 364 mm). 5, [1 blank] pages, engraved arms of the dedicatee Stanislas Potocki, engraved initial and tail-piece; 85 etchings printed in sanguine, by Carlo Antonini after Salvator Rosa, on 36 leaves, of which the last four full-sheet and folding, text and plates printed on thick paper watermarked with a fleur-de-lys in a double circle above initial B (Heawood 1600). An excellent copy, the etchings in deep, clear impressions (small black smudges on first folding plate, a few pale spots from damp to the other folding plates). Original parchment-backed pink pastepaper-covered boards, spine gold-tooled and -lettered "Rosa" (spine worn and torn, corners rubbed).***

Only Edition, issue with the engravings printed in sanguine, and with printed title and dedication, of a magnificent suite of etchings after the Neapolitan Baroque artist Salvator Rosa.

Testifying to his popularity over a century after his death, Antonini's etchings are precise reproductions, in the same direction and size, of Rosa's nearly complete etched oeuvre (one etching of a shepherd, Bartsch 22, was not reproduced). Rosa, who also acted, and probably wrote verse, epitomized the artist-poet, two centuries before the Romantic movement swept Europe. Perpetually pushing the limits of the genres he painted, his landscapes and dramatic battle scenes were swathed in a faintly oppressive mystery. His earliest experiments in printmaking date to 1660, late in his career. He completed 86 etchings.  Rosa was keenly concerned with maintaining control of his production and ownership of his plates, and he supervised the printing and marketing of the prints, and their distribution to dealers north of the Alps (probably through the firm of Giovanni Giacomo Rossi). Rosa used his prints as a vehicle for advertising his skills, and even tried to sell paintings through his etchings before creating them  (cf. Griffiths, p. 260).  One aspect of Rosa's strategic self-marketing was his discipline in selling his prints as series, and most collections of his etchings, in so-called "Rosa albums," mirror the contents of this album, with the series arranged in the same order.

The plates were kept in Rosa's family, and deposited in the eighteenth century in the Calcografia Apostolica. The resulting scarcity of available impressions left the public unsatisfied; hence the production of imitations, copies and piracies, which made their way into European collections. Some inferior copies were later mistaken for Rosa's originals (which may have negatively distorted his artistic reputation). In contrast, the engraver and architect Carlo Antonini here presents his luxuriously printed series honestly, for the use of amateurs of design, students of art, or as artists in training, to use as models.

Rosa's influence beyond Italy, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century England, "not only on its art but also on its modes of vision, taste, art criticism and theory philosophy, literature and gardening" (Wallace, p. 108), was largely made possible through the propagation of his etchings, and perhaps even more to the copies of his etchings. Antonini's skills as a reproductive engraver allowed him to reproduce the overall impact of Rosa's etchings, from the small, hugely influential Figurine, to the vast, dreamlike etchings of historical or mythological scenes. In Antonini's version these impressively large prints still fulfill retain Rosa's intention that they be regarded "as matched pairs, and [they] relate best visually when seen from some distance, especially the largest of them [the last four folded plates in this volume], the Death of Attius Regulus, with the Polycrates, and the Giants with the Oedipus. The latter pair in particular have the scale, sweep, and breadth of monumental paintings, with the Giants being the graphic equivalent of a Roman High Baroque ceiling painting" (Wallace, p. xx).

Dedicated to the young Polish count and art collector Stanisław Kostka Potocki, who was living in Rome in 1780, the album contains the 62 small etchings of the Figurine series (on 16 leaves, of which 15 with four etchings per page and one leaf with two etchings), 6 other small prints (on three leaves, two to a page) of Tritons and River Gods, 13 full-page etchings and 4 very large etchings printed on folding full sheets. The larger etchings comprise: Jason and the Dragon; Albert, disciple of St. William of Maleval; Glaucus and Scylla; Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl; Ceres and Phytalos; St. William of Maleval; the Dream of Aeneas; Alexander in the Studio of Apelles; Diogenes casting away his bowl; Democritus in Meditation; Diogenes and Alexander; The Academy of Plato; the Genius of Salvator Rosa; The Rescue of the Infant Oedipus; The Fall of the Giants; The Crucifixion of Polycrates; and The Death of Atilius Regulus, showing him being nailed into a tub by the Carthaginians. The last 10 plates include engraved captions.

The suite was also published without text, with the plates printed in black. It is thus often catalogued under the title of the first etching, Salvatoris Rosa Varia et concinna delineamenta. The last four full-sheet prints are sometimes bound with the centerfold hinged to a guard. 

Copies of this issue in the US are held by the Frick, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan Library, Boston Athenaeum, Houghton, National Gallery of Art, Free Library and CA State (Sacramento); copies of the prints without text are at the Getty, Mills College, and University of Virginia. 

Bartsch, XX.279.25 (copy); The Illustrated Bartsch, Commentary 4512, Appendix, no. IX, p. 431 (copies);  R. W. Wallace, The Etchings of Salvator Rosa (1979), catalogue no. 138, and chapter VII, "The Influence of Salvator Rosa's Etchings"; M. C. Cola, "La fortuna di Salvator Rosa nel Settecento: la raccolta di incisioni di Carlo Antonini," Salvator Rosa e il suo tempo  (2010), pp. 315-331; A. Griffiiths, "On Some Albums of Etchings by Salvator Rosa,"  Print Quarterly, 9, no. 3 (1992): 251-260. JC. Hartley. "On Compiling an Album of Etchings by Salvator Rosa." Print Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1992): 260-67. Thieme Becker 29:1 (Rosa) and 1:576 (Antonini).