Le pitture di Antonio Allegri detto il Correggio

The pretext for the work published in 1800 was the rediscovery of Correggio’s masterpiece, the so-called Camera di San Paolo, which the enclosure of the monastery of San Paolo in Parma had hitherto concealed from scholars and laymen. In addition to the texts of the dedication and description, due to Abbot Caluso and Gherardo De Rossi, also translated into French and Spanish, the work includes thirty-two sepia prints by Rosaspina representing the sixteen ovals of the vault and the lunettes below. To these are added the frontispiece, which appears to have been drawn in soot, the simplification in black of one of the four sides of the vault and the Diana, in red pencil, adorning the fireplace wall. Each image is stamped in the centre of the sheet. This is an exceptional lithographic essay, executed just four years after the invention of the ‘grease pencil’: perhaps the first European attempt to apply this new art. This reprint brings to light Bodoni’s masterpiece and the atmosphere of rediscovery that surrounded the Monastero di San Paolo at the beginning of the 19th century.