GIOVANNI BAGLIONE
Roma, Fei, 1642.
In 4to, pp (12), 405 (i.e. 305, the numbering is wrong), (3),a complete copy with the author’s portrait and frontispiece(Baglione del F. Greuter incid.), rarely included. Contemporarybinding in full vellum, with manuscript title on back,red cuts.
Original edition, completed by the two intaglio plates.
The first baroque storywriter in Rome, Baglione (1573 ca-1644) publishes its collections of biographies meaning topursue the bio-historical works by Vasari and Borghini. Heexpressly restricts his researches to 1572-1642, from GregorioXIII papacy to Urbano VIII’s one, focusing almostcompletely his interest into roman works, making of this collectiona sort of Rome guide and a unique historic-artistic source.
“Baglione’s sources are spoken, taken from live tradition,concerning artists much close in time or even still alive: thefreshness of reports and their big reliability comes from it...Much interesting the very start of the work, dedicated toCardinal Girolamo Colonna, the introduction to ‘virtuousreader’in which B. declares his intention: to pursue and accomplishthe biographies of Vasari and Borghini… Thiswork has a unique documentary worth because of richnessand precision of reports”. (Dbi)
At the end an author’s biography is added: beyond a literate,he was a painter too (he signs the drawing of frontispiecein this edition) and an antique dealer.
The literary frame gathering the biographies is the dialoguebetween a gentleman and a stranger, during five days.Trough the artists’lives, the fertility of Rome is outlined, asan artistic center, since the second half of XVI century to thefirst years of XVII. Vasari, Carracci, Zuccari, Caravaggio(“some believe he ruined the paint”) and his followers, theCavalier d’Arpino, Feti, Bernini, Domenichino, Bassano,beside the significant strangers in Rome, as like Rubens,Bril, Elsheimer.
The Rubens’ one is his oldest known biography. Rossetti672; Schlosser, 1935, pp. 400 e ss., 409; Piantanida 4325.DBI ad vocem
