Italian printmaker. He is known for repertories of engravings that reflect the antiquarian interests of his patrons, who were the high clergy of the Counter-Reformation Church in Rome. His style of engraving resembles that of Enea Vico, although inferior to it. Many of his plates are copies after the great Italian masters; they are etched, and finished with the graver. His plates number nearly 380.
The engraving reproduces, in the same direction, the splendid altarpiece completed under the direction of Giorgio Vasari in 1553, for the Roman church which, from this work, takes the name of San Giovanni Decollato.
In this book of Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri, published by Bartolomeo Grassi in 1585 in Rome, the martyrdom scenes in San Stefano Rotondo are reproduced along with their inscriptions, as if they were a catechism for the newly reformed church returning to its Early Christian roots. The present print shows the ninth fresco of San Stefano Rotondo: St Eustache and his companions being cremated in a bronze bull, one of the torture instruments of the period.
The church of San Stefano Rotondo, which has an unusual round shape, is known for its frescoes depicting Christian martyrdom under the Roman empire. The frescoes, painted by a team lead by Niccolò Circignani known as il Pomarancio, show the different means by which Romans tortured early Christian martyrs. The cycle of martyrs, as it became known, was commissioned by the German-Hungarian College of Jesuits, to which the church belongs, with the specific aim of educating their novices. During their novitiate in Rome (the training period given to decide whether or not to join the Church), trainee priests were isolated from the world to meditate on the life of Christ.
This print was made after Michelangelo’s fresco in the Cappella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican.
