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A rare separately issued, large-format bird's eye view of Rome, from the great Baroque Era of Art and Architecture.

This highly detailed and finely engraved view takes in all of the 'Eternal City', as it was encompassed by its ancient walls and the banks of the River Tiber. Numerous monuments and sites, all of which are still present today, can be seem on the view, including the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Piazza del Popolo, the Church of San Giovanni Laterno, and the Vatican, which is dominated by the Dome of St. Peter's Basilica and the Castel Sant'Angelo. Most notably, the great oval Colonnade that lines the square in front of St. Peter's was then in the process of being built by the Gianlorenzo Bernini, one of the towering figures of the Baroque Era.

Above the view are 12 vignettes of the main cities of the Papal States, including Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, Urbino, Ancona, Loreto, Camerino, Perugia, Viterbo, Orvieto, Spoleto. Along the sides are 6 scenes of Romans in various traditional costumes. The arms of Pope Clement IX (reigned 1667-9) adorn in the upper right of the main view.

The large registers of letterpress text to the bottom include a list of 24 sites in Rome relating to the main view, a description of Rome, as well as descriptions of the 12 cities featured in the vignettes as the top of the map.

At the time that this view was issued, Rome was enjoying a period of prosperity, and the city's population had reached over 120,000, making it one of the 10 largest cities in Europe. The Roman Catholic Church was on a high, having largely succeeded in driving the Counterreformation, and revenues were pouring in to the Vatican from around the world. This funded the great flourishing of art and architecture in Baroque Rome.

This view was made by Giuseppe Longhi in Bologna (flourished 1660s to 1680s). While Longhi was clearly highly talented, his prints are all very rare today and virtually nothing had been written about him and very little is known about his biography. Nevertheless, in 1676, he published a magnificent 12-sheet map of Italy (after Matthaeus Greuter), and in addition to the present work, made several fine views of European cities. In 2011, we sold the only known example of Longhi's plan of Vienna (1683).

Longhi's view of Rome is rare, we are not aware of another example appearing on the market during the last 25 years. The view is owned in partnership with Antiquarius of Rome.