Baths of Diocletian -1561

Roman Antiquities

One from a series of  12 etchings with engravings published by Hieronymus Cock. and dated 1561 on one print.

After the Praecipua aliquot Romanae antiquitatis ruinarum monimenta, vivis prospectibus, ad veri imitationem affabre designata published in 1551 there was an aditional series of 12 prints, one of them dated 1561.

These engravings apparently belong to a new and enlarged edition of the Praecipua . It should be noted here that, according to Brunet, v.2, col.114, there was a 1551 edition of the Praecipua which contained 37 plates plus the title page. Variations in details, especially in the representation of human figures, differentiates these five plates from those of the 1551 edition.

The repesentation of the human figures is in my eyes typical for Doeticum and noticable also in his landscape prints after Hans Bol.

In general the Roman Antiquities series by Cock are not accuratly described with contradictions and lacuna. It looks like these works where born in the same period, following de design drawings by Cock and partly engraved by himself and by Doeticum. The head work consists of the prints numbered A-Z inside the printplate, but then again Cock did not make it easy by making a second general view of the Colosseum numbered AA

Ex ruinis thermarum Imp[eratoris] Diocletiani prospectus unus
(A view from the ruins of the baths of the emperor Diocletian)

As the other etchings from this early series on paper watermarked wit a Gotic P