Italy - Rome; Giovanni Battista Falda (Valdugia 1643 –...

The work offers a spectacular and rigorous perspective view of Via del Plebiscito in Rome (at the time commonly known as Strada di San Marco or della via Papale). The print has strong documentary value: it celebrates the modernization interventions desired by Pope Alexander VII Chigi. The pontiff ordered the widening, straightening, and demolition of the old medieval cottages to create a straight, monumental, and sumptuous road axis, functional to the grand papal processions moving toward the Vatican. Falda sections off the street space showing the most important noble palaces of the time that defined (and still define) the architectural backdrop of the street: • 1. Palazzo di San Marco (on the left): Identified with the number "1" in the engraving's legend, it is the original nucleus of today’s Palazzo Venezia. The building is depicted in its austere quattrocento grandeur, with the characteristic windows in guelf cross shape and the distinctive upper battlements, before the area underwent further urban variations in the centuries that followed. • 2. Palazzo d'Aste (on the right in the foreground): Recognizable on the right for its sumptuous late-Renaissance freestone façade. Designed by the architect Giovanni Antonio de Rossi, it would become famous in the centuries to come under the name Palazzo Bonaparte (since it housed Maria Letizia Ramolino, Napoleon’s mother). • 3. The palaces on the right side (continuing toward the background): The perspective allows us to glimpse the façade of Palazzo Gottifredi-Grazioli and the adjacent properties, partially modified or regularized precisely as a result of the street alignment decrees issued by Pope Chigi. • 4. The Church of the Gesù (in the background): The vanishing point of the composition scenographically converges toward the façade and the dome of the Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, the mother church of the Society of Jesus. The façade of the majestic temple closes the Baroque perspective, underscoring the monumentality given to the entire street. • 5. Elements of daily life (the "Macchiette"): As typical of Falda’s style, the street is animated by elegant period carriages, gentilmen, prelates, and pedestrians on foot. These anthropic elements serve not only to give dynamism to the scene but also to act as a precise proportional scale for the observer. CONDITION REPORT: A specimen in good overall conservation, printed on contemporary wove parchment from the 17th century. The ink is crisp, fresh, and well contrasted, with the deep blacks typical of Falda’s early printings. The sheet preserves wide white margins beyond the plate imprint."

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