PRUNETTI, Michelangelo
Roma, Zempel, 1786
In -12mo, pp. (1), 192, (1); boards.The first edition of this work, that would have been blamed by Cicognara for missing sources (“Many theoretical and historical notions, and a big amount of judgements, that the shortness of work couldn’t justify”); Prunetti’s book is very interesting for the descriptions of images inside churches and palaces of Rome at the end of XVIII century, accomplished by a detailed index of artists and places.
The author itself affirms, after his dedication to Stanislao Sanseverino: “To write this work I grabbed with no scruples many sentences, and sometimes paragraphs by authors who maybe had done the same with else books”. An original and eclectic writer, according the small biografical information gathered, Prunetti dead in Rome (where he was born) around 1851, 94 years old: his production testifies his wide curiosity and the costume to loosely grab the sources: between his many works, in 1820 he published a book to distinguish original paintings from copies; in ‘25 a pictoresque method to stay healty, expecially in Rome, without medications, etc. His daughter Margherita married in 1824 the German artist Franz Ludwig Catel, who had moved to Rome years before. This book is his first published work.
