Rossini (Luigi)

a view of the Tomb of Nero, mistakenly so named in the middle ages where it is, in fact, the tomb of Publius Vibius Marianus, proconsul of Sardinia. This sepulchral monument now gives its name to the district of Rome. This is one of 101 plates produced by Rossini (1790-1857) for his great work ‘Le Antichitá Romane’ (1819-1829), which followed very much in the tradition established by his 18th century predecessor, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, in recording the increasingly rediscovered remnants of ancient Rome being unearthed by archaeologists in amongst the grandeur of later baroque Rome. Rossini’s plates are distinguished by the greater presence of contemporary figures going about their daily lives at all levels of society,

engraving on wove paper, 560 x 405 mm. (22 x 16 in), two horizontal creases across the sky, a few repairs to the sheet edges, well outside the plate,