VASI, Giuseppe - b. 1710 Corleone, d. 1782 Roma - WGA

VASI, Giuseppe

(b. 1710 Corleone, d. 1782 Roma)

Italian engraver and painter. After completing a classical education, he trained as a printmaker in Palermo, possibly at the Collegio Carolino, which was founded by the Jesuit Order in 1728 and at which the etcher Francesco Ciché (active before 1707-1742) was a teacher. Vasi was already an accomplished engraver when, in 1736, he contributed to the illustration of La reggia in trionfo by Pietro La Placa, which described the festivities held in Palermo to mark the coronation of Charles VII of Naples (the future Charles III of Spain). That same year Vasi moved to Rome, where, as a Neapolitan subject, he was immediately afforded the protection of the ambassador, Cardinal Troiano Aquaviva d’Aragona (1694-1747).

In Rome he met other artists who worked for the same patron: Sebastiano Conca, Luigi Vanvitelli and Ferdinando Fuga. It is against this background that Vasi’s work in Rome, when he was in residence at the Palazzo Farnese, should be considered: his monopoly as the engraver of the Roman records of the monarch, the plates for the festivals of the ‘Chinea’ and the triumphal arches erected in front of the Palatine gardens on the occasion of temporal sovereignty over Rome.

About 1741-43 Vasi conceived the idea of a collection of views of Rome and published his Vedute del Tevere, which preceded the great work of his life, the ten volumes of Delle magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna (1747-61). This extraordinary collection of more than 250 plates offers a lively and detailed panorama of contemporary Rome, classified by subject, including city gates, squares, churches, convents, palaces, bridges and villas. The gigantic Prospetto dell’alma città di Roma was dedicated in 1765 to Charles III, then King of Spain. In addition to engraving the 437 plates, Vasi wrote several accompanying texts, often of some length. He also produced a guidebook, the Itinerario istruttivo … di Roma, which was first published in 1763 and repeatedly updated during his lifetime. After his death further editions were published by his son Mariano (1744-1820), who was also an engraver.

Giuseppe Vasi’s most important pupil was Piranesi, whom he taught the technique of single-cut engraving in the early 1740s.

Chiesa di Santa Maria Liberatrice

This etching was published as Plate 54 in “Raccolta Delle Piu Belle Veduta Antiche, E Moderne Di Roma.”

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High Altar

The print shows the high altar of the disappeared church of Sant’Isidoro in Rome.

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View of the Palazzo di Caprarola

The Villa Farnese was constructed on the foundations of a fortress begun c. 1521 for Pope Paul III by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi. This accounts for its unusual pentagonal plan with arrowhead bastions. Sangallo’s project had not gone further than the exterior walls on the ground floor. Giacomo da Vignola approached the unfinished structure as a challenge and opportunity to create a unique solution. What was built from 1559 onward had the form of a fortress and the function of a villa, but was in its extravagance an urban palace.

The circular courtyard at the centre of the structure was Vignola’s own design. He also designed the axial, terraced approach to the villa, with a straight road ascending from the village to an oval forecourt with a rusticated loggia facing a fish pond (filled in before 1600). The forecourt is embraced by two symmetrical semicircular horse-ramps rising to a second, larger, trapezoidal court, with staircases leading up to the villa itself. These elements provide a magnificent spatial setting for the drafted masonry fa�ade of the villa, articulated by two orders of pilasters in local volcanic stone. The design drew extensively on architecture at the Vatican in Rome, the seat of the patron’s power: the tripartite, fortified fa�ade with central loggia (originally open) recalls Innocent VIII’s Villa Belvedere (1480s), while the double-ramped staircase in front of the villa and the triumphal-arch motif on the upper portico of the courtyard were derived from Bramante’s Cortile del Belvedere (begun 1505). The contrast between the solid, massive lower storey and the flat, abstract, geometrical upper storeys, however, was characteristic of Vignola’s own classicizing Mannerist style.

The engraving by Giuseppe Vasi shows the Palazzo in the 1740s.

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