Mocchetti (Alessandro)

after Francesco Giangiacomo, plate XI from volume VII of ‘Il Museo Pio-Clementino Descritto da Ennio Quirino Visconti’, depicting a perspective view of the beautifully carved porphyry sarcophagus of Constantina, daughter of Emperor Constantine I, and in whose honour tradition has it that he erected the circular church of Santa Costanza in the via Nomentana in Rome, following her death in AD 354, from where it was relocated to the Vatican museum of Pio-Clementino in the 18th century. The panels are decorated with heavy vine scrolls populated with putti harvesting and treading grapes, peacocks and a ram, , the end panel and lid ornamented with swags and bacchic masks,

engravingon Van der Ley watermarked laid paper, 320 x 485 mm. (12 1/2 x 19 1/8 in), a few short splits and occasional small losses at sheet edges, one just affecting the lower plate mark but well below the title, a very small rust spot in the lower image,