a perspective view with detailed insets of the four carved faces of the Matteiano obelisk, also known as the Celimontana obelisk, from Blaeu’s ‘Nouveau Theatre d’Italie’. It is one of several ancient Egyptian obelisks in Rome, giving it the highest concentration of such monuments in the world. It began as one of a pair, with the Macuteo obelisk that forms the centrepiece of the fountain in front of the Pantheon, both originally stood in front of the Temple of Ra at Heliopolis, before being removed to classical Rome to stand in front of the Temple of Isis. Their dark age and early medieval history is obscure, but this one depicted was known to have stood by the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill in the 14th century. At some point it became broken, so only the upper, carved, section, measuring 2.68m, remains of the original, the lower section having been added later, but taking it up to 12.23m today, including the pedestal. Its modern history starts in 1582, when it was presented by the Senate to Ciriaco Mattei, as attested by the inscription on the pedestal panel facing us. who by 1587 had erected it in the theatre in the gardens of his Villa Celimontana. It was later refurbished and relocated within the gardens by the Spanish architect, Antonio Celles, in 1817, for the Spaniard Manuel de Godoy who lived there in the early 19th century,
engraving on laid paper, 460 x 290 mm. (18 1/8 x 11 3/8 in), numbered in ink, LI, in the lower right corner, possibly in a contemporary hand, trimmed on the left plate mark and remargined,