Bartolomeo Pinelli - Mitologia illustrata - 1897

Bartolomeo Pinelli, Illustrated Mythology. Introduction and descriptive text by Angelo de Gubernatis. Rome, Maussier e Maruca, 1987. Hardcover in cloth with applied medallion. Illustrations by Barolomeo Pinelli. Traces of time on the cover - 2 corners detached - diffuse foxing. On auction with no reserve!

Bartolomeo Pinelli (Rome, November 20, 1781 – Rome, April 1, 1835) was an Italian engraver, painter and ceramicist.

Bartolomeo Pinelli
Extremely prolific graphic artist, according to recent estimates he produced about four thousand engravings and ten thousand drawings[1].

In his prints he depicted the costumes of the Italian peoples, the great masterpieces of literature (Aeneid, Divine Comedy, Orlando Furioso, Jerusalem Delivered, Don Quixote, Manzoni), and subjects from Roman, Greek, Napoleonic history, etc. The most recurring theme overall is Rome, its inhabitants, its monuments, the ancient city and the city contemporaneous to him. He had among his pupils the well-known portraitist from Gorizia, Giuseppe Tominz.

His work as an illustrator possesses, beyond intrinsic artistic value, a significant documentary meaning for the ethnography of Rome, of Italy and of Switzerland[2].

Biografia

Bust commemorating B. Pinelli in Trastevere
The goddess Roma and the King of Rome, Napoleonic Museum in Rome
Fresco in the Villa Villoresi in Sesto Fiorentino
Morra players
Vera Trasteverina
Collection of the Costumes of the Kingdom of Naples:
"Naples Costume"
Bathers
Frontispiece of the collection of 15 Costumes of Switzerland
Piazza di S. Cosimato in Trastevere
Aeneas and the god Tiberinus
He was born in Rome on November 20, 1781, to Giovanni Battista and Francesca Gianfarani, in a building in the Trastevere rione that no longer exists today, but opposite which lies a plaque and a bronze bust in his honor.

His father was a modeller of devotional statues, and he introduced him to the art of manipulating ceramics. However his abilities in figurative work would be expressed mainly through etching, drawing and painting. He first trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, the city where the family had moved in 1792, and then at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where he had returned in 1799. In the same year 1799 he began collaboration with Franz Kaisermann, for whom he painted the figures in his watercolor views. Meanwhile he began his studies, which blossomed in 1807 into the Album of thirty-six watercolors of Scenes and Costumes of Rome and Lazio.

Regarding his physical appearance and behavioral habits, a contemporary wrote of him:

“Bartolomeo Pinelli was of medium height, with a lively expression; he wore a full head of hair that, in long curls, framed his face and fell in ringlets in front [...]; his facial features were marked, but regular, and he wore only small mustaches as seen in his bust placed at the Pincio. His manners were eccentric, fond of joking too much. He dressed negligently in the manner of the people and one always saw him roaming Rome accompanied by two large mastiffs and equipped with a mace whose knob was a bronze figure. He was quick to anger although usually cheerful and playful; he was skeptical [i.e., atheistic] like many men of genius of his time and he was a patriot in his own way, that is, in love with ancient Rome, in which he concentrated all his affections”
(David Silvagni, The Court and Roman Society in the XVIIth and XIXth centuries, Rome, Forzani & C. Printers to the Senate, 1881-4, vol. 3, vol. III, p. 395)

In 1809 he produced his first series of engravings titled Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes etched in aquaforte. It was probably in the same year that he married Mariangela Gatti, in a republican ceremony, and from which were born a daughter, perhaps who died young and whose exact dates are unknown, and a son, Achille. In 1816 he produced the illustrations for Roman History and in 1821 those for Greek History. Between 1822 and 1823 he produced the fifty-two plates for Meo Patacca. Beyond his repertory of images devoted to Roman costumes, Pinelli became known for illustrating numerous books, creating cycles inspired by Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid and Greco-Roman mythology in general: works that most reveal the imprint of neoclassicism.

On August 25, 1834, due to his indifference to the Easter precept, he received the interdict with contempt.

He died poor on April 1, 1835, leaving unfinished the illustration of the Roman May by Giovanni Camillo Peresio.