University of Virginia Library

45. Ficoroni, Francesco de'.

Vol. I. LE VESTIGIA, / E RARITÁ / DI / ROMA ANTICA / RICERCATE,
E SPIEGATE / DA / FRANCESCO DE' FICORONI /

Aggregato alla Reale Accademia / di Francia. / LIBRO PRIMO / DE-
DICATO / Alla Santita' di Nostro Signore / BENEDETTO XIV.
/ IN ROMA MDCCXLIV. / Nella Stamperia di Girolamo Mainardi.
/ CON LICENZA DE' SUPERIORI.

4to. Two-color title page (1 leaf); dedication (1 leaf); notes to reader
(1 leaf); indexes (3 leaves); text (1-186); appendix (187-95).

bound with

Vol. II. [Half title:] LE / SINGOLARITÁ / DI / ROMA MODERNA
/ RICERCATE, E SPIEGATE / DA / FRANCESCO DE'
FICORONI / Aggregato alla Reale Accademia di Francia.

4to. Half title (1 leaf); indexes (3 leaves); text (1-77).

In the two volumes there are 40 engravings, of which 4 are folding,
bound in the text and, in addition, numerous engraved figures in the text.

The drawings for the illustrations were by Salvator de Franceschi and
Franciscus Viera. The engravers, for those few engravings which are
signed, were Io de Franceschi and Maximilian Joseph Limpach, an eighteenth-century
engraver from Prague who worked in Rome.

Francesco de' Ficoroni (1664-1747), born in Lugnano nel Lazio,
was a student of antiquity and a collector. Although he published several
books before the Vestigia, his collections were considered better than his
writings.

The Vestigia (see Plate XXXV) is a kind of guidebook with many
views of buildings both old and new, including churches, and many
statues and coins. Among the old buildings are the Pantheon and the
temple of Fortuna Virilis, both used as precedents for the University of
Virginia, although Jefferson no longer owned the book at the time he
designed the University.

Jefferson sold his set of the Vestigia, which Kimball (p. 94) says
was acquired between 1785 and 1789, to Congress. Sowerby notes that
the cost was entered by Jefferson as "15.0" in his undated manuscript
catalogue. Jefferson ordered the two volumes of this work in a single
volume for the University in the section on "Architecture" of the want
list, and it is apparently sometimes so bound. There is no record of the
library's having acquired the book until recently, when a copy, with the
two volumes bound in one, entered the collections, the gift of the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation.

U. Va.

*DG62.5.F5.1744

M

Sowerby 4196

Plate XXXV. From No. 45. Title page (Vol. I).