112 Jan Goeree / Francois Halma - Roman Chalcographic Engraving. Index Locorum.

Hand-coloured print originates from "Beschryving van Oud en Nieuw Rome" (Description of Ancient and New Rome). Since the Renaissance, ancient Rome has held a great attraction for art lovers and artists. In numerous publications the authors sketched a picture of the city's view. The ambitions of the Parisian François-Jacques Deseine (1699-1715) were lofty: he established himself as a bookseller in Rome and wanted to bundle all existing knowledge about the city from Latin and Italian sources in one French-language book. In 1690 he published a description of the city: it is very accurate and accurately mentions the sources. The Amsterdam bookseller François Halma translated the work into Dutch in 1704 and added copper engravings from a work he had already published: the Thesaurus antiquitatum Romanarum by Joannes Georgius Graevius from 1694-1699. The first of the three parts describes ancient Rome and the paintings in the Tomba dei Nasoni on the Via Flaminia. The other parts sketch contemporary Rome.