Rare panorama of Rome by Cassini 1807
Rare original etching engraving depicting a "View of the profile of the city of Rome outlined from the palace of Villa Medici at the Trinità dei Monti on Monte Pincio".
In Rome, at the Calcografia Camerale, 1807, engraved by P. Gio. M. Cassini Somascan, drawn by Franc. Mancinelli.
The view is about 259 x 51 cm made in 4 joined sheets. Framed.
Good conditions commensurate with age. Restorations and defects.
Giovanni Maria Cassini (1745-1824), Somascan regular cleric, disciple of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, was a geographer, cartographer and engraver working in Rome in the decades between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He was responsible for the invention of a new projection method, known as Cassini, also used for the creation of the 32-sheet geographical atlas of the kingdom of Naples signed by Giovanni Antonio Rizzi Zannoni.
Among his major works, in addition to a general map of Italy in 15 sheets published in 1793, we find the New Universal Geographic Atlas in three volumes published in Rome from 1792 to 1801 whose tables of the first volume are preceded by a short introductory essay on the study of geography and which also aims to outline the method followed for the realization of the atlas itself. The work was commissioned by the Chamber of Chalcography of Rome in order to replace the now obsolete Geographical Mercury in use in previous decades. Cassini signs all the papers as an engraver.
The introductory tables of the first volume deal with topics of general and astronomical geography, among these the two celestial planispheres published as early as 1790 stand out for their beauty.
