Main Content
Summary
Author: Davanzati, Benigno
Title: Notizie al pellegrino della basilica di Santa Prassede.
Publication: Roma, Antonio de' Rossi 1725.
Price: Sold
Reference: 11496
Full Description
4to. (28) + 544 + (20)pp, engraved frontispiece, 1 other engraved plate. Contemporary full vellum. Some intermittent light spotting and browning (owing to the nature of the paper on which the book is printed).
Only edition of this extensive monograph devoted to the church of Sta Prassede in Rome, built in the ninth century and notable for its early mediaeval mosaics. As with other Roman churches, the interior was refurbished in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the author, Benigno Davanzati (1670-1746), identifies the artists responsible for all the frescoes and altarpieces done during this period, as well as transcribing all the inscriptions on the tombs in the church, and providing exhaustive information on Sta Prassede herself and on other saints, martyrs and relics connected with the church. Ownership of the church had belonged to the Abbey of Vallombrosa in Tuscany since the end of the twelfth century, and Davanzati, as Abbot of Vallombrosa, was familiar with all aspects of the church's history and had himself recently fitted out a new chapel in the nave with an altarpiece and frescoes by the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Severoni (pp.236-7). Schudt 1058.