Enea Vico

Bartsch attributed this sheet to Enea Vico, who is now considered to be the inventor of the model (Marigliani, p. 194). It was first issued by Ferrando Bertelli, whose publishing activities are documented in Venice around the middle of the 16th century, and was again published by Lafreri in Rome. Bertelli’s address was not fully erased and is still legible, which is how Lafreri generally handled the plates he acquired from other publishers (Rubach, p. 103 f.). The graceful female figure holding sprigs in her hands, referred to in Lafreri’s index as Statua della Dea Florida (Z. 244), is also connoted in the three lines of text at the bottom left as Proserpina or Persephone. After her abduction by Pluto, the god of the underworld, the daughter of the earth-goddess Ceres was allowed to spend only half of the year above ground, where – as a mythological explanation of the seasons of the year – she brought plants to flower before having to return beneath the earth for the other half of the year, which was why plants withered in autumn and winter. The iconography of Vico’s invention is of great subtlety. In her hands Flora holds elegantly sketched flowering twigs, the delicate buds of which symbolise fertility and the eternal cycle of nature. A superb, harmonious and tonal early impression, before the addresses of Duchetti and Orlandi. With wide margins around the inky platemark. Minimal foxing and somewhat discoloured along the margins, minor ageing, otherwise in excellent, fresh and original condition.