Descrizione

ZOCCHI, Giuseppe (1711 or 1717-1767) – Scelta di XXIV vedute delle principali contrade, piazze, chiese, i palazzi della Citta di Firenze. Florence, Giuseppe Allegrini, 1744.

Atlantic folio (578×755 mm.), in loose sheets preserved in a fitting pasteboard case with title on cover, the complete series of 24 views of Florence, etching and engraving on laid paper, with the double-page engraved allegorical title with dedication by Johann Gottfried Seuter after G. Magni. In our copy is not present the single-sheet dedicatory leaf, probably because this set was meant to be left plain, and not bound, therefore such leaf would have incongruent with a series of double-page engravings, including the title-page.
First edition of this famous series of 24 double-page views of Florence by various engravers after Giuseppe Zocchi, who is to Florence what Canaletto and Piranesi are to Venice and Rome. His ‘Scelta di XXIV vedute’ is without doubt the greatest series of views of Florence and the best and most beautiful record of the city in the 18th century. Some believed to see in this work a response to the 21 Venetian plates of Marieschi, published in 1741. It was at the request of his patron and collector, the Marquis Andrea Gerini, that Zocchi began to draw this suite, around 1738. According to Moreni, these drawings (nowadays kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in NY) were then given to John Gottfried Seuter, whom Gerini had brought to Florence. Seuter prepared the engraving of the plates, chose the engravers and gave each the subjects he was to interpret on copper, in etching. A total of 15 artists, including Bernardo Sgrilli, Carlo Gregori, Johann Sebastian Miller, Antonio Pazzi, Giuseppe Vasi and others, where employed to create the prints after Zocchi’s drawings; Zocchi himself contributed the figures in five of the plates. This series was first published in 1744 by Allegrini, the present copy, the second edition was published by Bouchard in 1754, who also published the third and final edition in 1757. According to R.M. Mason, Giuseppe Zocchi – Vedute di Firenze e della Toscana, Florence, 1981, a map of the city was only included definitively in the third edition, and sometime in the 2nd edn. In our copy is not present the single page dedicatory leaf, probably not inserted ‘ab origine’. Graesse VI, 2, 268f.; Brunet V, 1107; Thieme-Becker XXXVI, 539; Berlin Kat. 2700; Pierpont Morgan Library, Views of Florence and Tuscany by G. Zocchi, plates 2-26; Millard, IV, 170 (second issue); Moreni, II, p. 324; Nagler, XXV, p. 305; Mori-Boffito, p. 80.