Inside the book

The volume contains 45 original etchings on 29 sheets, including the engraved allegorical title page depicting the Capitoline Wolf with Romulus and Remus, and the personification of the River Tiber, within an architectural frame featuring a fountain and the armorial bearings of the dedicatee, Andrea Corsini. It comprises 32 etchings printed on 16 sheets and 13 full-page etchings. The sequence opens with the city fountains of Rome: Piazza San Pietro; the Acqua Felice, recording the dedication of the monument to Sixtus V; the twin granite basins of Piazza Farnese; the Mattei Fountain, or Fontana delle Tartarughe; and the Marforio. The collection proceeds through the most celebrated fountains of the period, each represented with the life unfolding around it, adding warmth and charm to the splendid monuments: children at play, adults going about their business, and dogs wandering the streets. It is simply everyday life unfolding in the margins of a seventeenth-century collection of prints devoted to the fountains of Rome. Three bird's-eye prospects close the volume: the Giardino Mattei, the Giardino del Cardinale Montalto, the Peretti Villa near Termini, and the plan of the Villa d'Este after Duperac, keyed to thirty-five fountains.