Grazioli, Pietro
De praeclaris Mediolani aedificiis quae Aenobarbi cladem antecesserunt dissertatio cum duplice appendice altera de sculpturis eiusdem urbis … altere de Carcere Zebedeo … accessit Rythmus de Mediolano jam editus, ab eodem vero emendatus, & notis auctus.
Milano, “in Regia Curia” 1735.
Full Description
4to. (22) (including title leaf printed in red and black, with engraved vignette) + 204 (the last four pages misnumbered 191-4) + xxiv + (4)pp, (21) engraved plates (of which one is engraved folding map, one other is folding and one double-page), also 2 engraved vignettes and 2 engraved initials in text. Plate illustrating a surviving wall tower which precedes page 25 is shaved at foot with partial loss of ground plan of tower and caption, and the folding plate of surviving Roman columns following p.66 has had strips of old paper added long ago above and below its original engraved area. Contemporary full vellum. Neat eighteenth century ink ownership inscription “Coll.Linc.S.J.” on title leaf (i.e. copy was formerly in the library of the Jesuit College at Linz, Austria). A good, fresh, clean copy.
Only edition of this scholarly illustrated monograph by Pietro Grazioli (1700-1753), a Barnabite monk from Bologna, discussing the documentary and physical evidence for the temples, public buildings, walls, towers and gates of the Roman Imperial period which had survived in the city of Milan in some form or other into the early middle ages, only to be largely destroyed in the demolition of the entire city ordered by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (”Aenobarbus”) in 1162. Of particular interest are the engraved map showing the location both of the surviving Roman remains and of the city’s Early Christian churches, two plates illustrating extant wall towers, and a series of plates illustrating Roman tombstones and sculptured bas reliefs recovered from sites within the city walls. Cicognara 4240 ; not in Berlin Cat.