Veduta generale della città di Roma presa dal Monte Aventino
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- Subjects
- Italy - Description and travel
- Prints - Artists, German - Noack (Wilhelm Johann Adam), 1800-1833
- Prints - Artists, Italian - Penna (Agostino), active 1827-1846
- Topographical books and prints - Italy - Rome
- Authors/Creators
- Gmelin, Wilhelm Friedrich, 1760-1820
- Artists/Illustrators
- Gmelin, Wilhelm Friedrich, 1760-1820
- Noack, Wilhelm Johann Adam, 1800-1833
- Penna, Agostino, active 1827-1846
Gmelin, Wilhelm Friedrich
Badenweiler/Breisgau 1760 – 1820 Rome
Veduta generale della città di Roma presa dal Monte Aventino.
Rome 1846
engraved panorama on three sheets (each 465 × 690 mm platemark, 545 × 765 mm sheet), forming (if dissected and joined) a panorama 465 × 2070 mm: ■ [1] lettered G.F. Gmelin dis. dal vero ■ [2] lettered Veduta generale della città di Roma presa dal Monte Aventino ■ [3] lettered Agostino Penna incise Roma 1846; [4] engraved and printed key plate (470 × 695 mm platemark, 540 × 760 mm sheet), identifying 143 sites, lettered Tavola di Aggiunta | che contiene la pianta di Roma e l’indicazione de’punti principali del panorama contrassegnati da numeri ed incisi a contorno.
paper watermark PM | F (Pietro Miliani, Fabriano)
Lightly foxed, otherwise a fine impression.
A panorama of Rome substantially dependent on drawings made by Gmelin from his own garden on the Aventine Hill. The left panel of the three-sheet panorama depicts the Tiber from the Porto di Ripa to the Ponte Palatino; the centre panel continues from the Tempio di Vesta to the Chiesa di Santa Anastasia; and the third from the Monte Palatino to the Terme di Caracalla. The principal sites depicted in each panel (51, 57, 35 respectively) are identified on an accompanying ‘Tavola di Aggiunta’.
Born in the Black Forest and a pupil for ten years of Christian Mechel in Basel, Gmelin established himself in Rome in 1787, and he worked there or in Naples until his death in Rome on 22 September 1820, producing a large number of sepia drawings of places in and around Rome, some of which he engraved and published himself.1 In the summer of 1829, various drawings made by Gmelin at the very end of his life were obtained by a young German printmaker, newly arrived in Rome, Wilhelm Noack (1800–1833). According to family tradition, Noack conceived the idea of transforming some of these drawings – supplemented by numerous direct observations of his own – into a panorama.2
Two panels were etched before Noack’s death (17 September 1833), of which one – lettered Veduta di Roma dall’Aventino | W.F. Gmelin Del. Roma 1820 | W. Noack inc – was separately published (and later reused as the left sheet of the panorama).3 The project then fell into abeyance, until completed more than a decade later by Agostino Penna (fl. Rome 1827–1846), a versatile draughtsman and printmaker known for his Roman panoramas,4 without acknowledgement of Noack’s contribution.
These impressions are known to the writer
● Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica, Gabinetto delle Stampe, Stampe / Cartella / Panorami 20 (with Tavola di Aggiunta)5 ● Melbourne, University, Ian Potter Museum of Art, 1978.0025 (hand-coloured)6 ● Milan, Civica raccolta delle stampe e dei disegni7 ● Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele8 ● Rome, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica9 ● Rome, Libreria Antiquarius (Stefano Bifolco), Codice catalogo IT33233 (without Tavola di Aggiunta) ● Unlocated, formerly in the Oppermann Collection (with Tavola di Aggiunta)10
The Vatican and Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica impressions both carry a publication line ‘in Roma presso il negozio di stampe in via Due Macelli n° 104’ which does not appear on our impression.
1. Modern accounts of Gmelin include Lucia Cavazzi Palladini, ‘Disegni e incisioni di G.F. Gmelin nel Gabinetto Comunale delle Stampe’ in Bollettino dei Musei Comunali di Roma 23 (1976), pp.45–52; and Antony Griffiths and Frances Carey, German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe (London 1994), pp.136–139. Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, xiv, p.273 (q.v. Gmelin); xxv, p.492 (q.v. Noack).
2. Family tradition recollected by August Noack (1903), who possessed a number of the artist’s drawings and sketchbooks, and recorded by Friedrich Noack, ‘Schedarium der Künstler in Rom’, q.v. ‘Noack, Wilhelm’ (http://db.biblhertz.it); compare Karl Noack, ‘Noack, Johann Adam Wilhelm’ in Hessische Biographien, in Verbindung mit Karl Esselborn und Georg Lehnert herausgegeben von Herman Haupt (Darmstadt 1934), iii, pp.375–377.
3. Simonetta Tozzi, in Il paesaggio secondo natura: Jacob Philipp Hackert e la sua cerchia, catalogue of an exhibition, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 14 July–30 September 1994, edited by Paolo Chiarini (Rome 1994), pp.253, 266 no. 102 (a proof before letters reproduced, from Gabinetto Comunale delle Stampe di Roma, M.R. 40676); Cesare De Seta, Imago urbis Romae: l’immagine di Roma in età moderna, catalogue of an exhibition, Musei capitolini, 11 February–15 May 2005 (Rome 2005), p.194 no. 33 reproduced (p.140); Roma, la magnifica visione: vedute panoramiche del xviii e xix secolo dalle collezioni del Museo di Roma, catalogue of an exhibition, Museo di Roma, 15 November 2008–19 April 2009 (Rome 2008), pp.30, 47 no. 12 reproduced (inv. MR 40676).
4. See Penna’s ‘Veduta di Roma con l’Ospedale di S. Spirito e Castel S. Angelo’ (64 × 212 cm) reproduced in Cesare De Seta, op. cit., p.194 no. 34 and p.141 (Rome, Biblioteca di Archeologia e di Storia d’Arte, Fondo Lanciani, xi, 19.14–15); Paola Baldassarri, ‘L’opera grafica di Agostino Penna sulla Villa Adriana (Mss. Lanciani 138)’ in Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, third series, 11 (1988), p.5.
5. Exhibited Roma veduta: Disegni e stampe panoramiche della città dal xv al xix secolo, catalogue of an exhibition, Palazzo Poli, 30 September 2000–28 January 2001, edited by Mario Gori Sassoli (Rome 2000), pp.224–225 no. 69 reproduced (entry by Mario Bevilacqua).
6. http://www.collectionsaustralia.net.au.
7. Paolo Arrigoni and Achille Bertarelli, Piante e vedute di Roma e del Lazio conservate nella Raccolta delle stampe e dei disegni (Milan 1939), p.27 no. 223 reporting two impressions (both in Albo L10).
8. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele (Rome), Mostra di topografia romana ordinata in occasione del Congresso storico inaugurato in Roma li 2 aprile del 1903 (Rome 1903), p.19.
9. Cf. Bibliotheca Hertziana, ‘Catalogo illustrato delle piante di Roma online’ (http://fmdb.biblhertz.it).
10. Katalog der sehr reichen Kupferstichsammlungen des Herrn E. F. Oppermann und eines anderen Berliner Kunstfreundes (Berlin: Amsler & Ruthardt 1882), p.282 lot 3642 (three sheets and ‘Erklärungsblatt’).