PATCH, Thomas.

The life of Frá Bartolommeo della Porta, a Tuscan painter, with his works, engraved from the original pictures, dedicated, to the Honourable Horace Walpole, an intelligent promoter, of the fine arts, by his most obedient and most humble servant Thomas Patch.

[Colophon:] Florence, 1772. Folio, pp. [ii], title and text in English and Italian, title within engraved vignette, with 24 plates printed in black, red or ochre.[Bound with:][––––––––––––.] Il quadro originale, dipinto in tavola a chiaro oscuro da Frà Bartolommeo della Porta, è presentemente nella galleria di S. A. R. Florence, [no publisher], 1773.Folio, double-page title-plate and 23 plates printed in ochre. [Bound with:][––––––––––––.] Al nobil uomo il signore Bernardo Manetti patrizio Fiorentino Tommaso Patch dedica questi monumenti dell’antico splendore di sua famiglia in segno di obbligazione e di stima. [Colophon:] Florence, 1772.Folio, pp. [ii], title and text in Italian and English, title within engraved vignette, with 12 plates printed in black or ochre.Three works bound together in one folio volume; very fresh copies in Italian contemporary speckled paper boards, sheep spine and cornerpieces, gilt lettering-piece, blue edges; one corner restored; preserved in a modern cloth box; with the bookplate of Charles Sebag-Montefiore. First editions, rare. This album comprises three suites of etched and engraved plates by the English artist and connoisseur Thomas Patch. The first two reproduce panel paintings and frescoes attributed to Fra Bartolomeo (1472?–1517), the third reproduces frescoes now attributed to Spinello Aretino (d. 1410/11) but which in the author’s day were thought to be by Giotto. This last series is of particular importance, being the only record of Aretino’s fresco cycle in the Manetti chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, which was destroyed (save a few fragments, some of which Patch came to own) as a result of a fire on 28–29 January 1771. Patch reproduces the compositions of the damaged frescoes, carefully rendering, in two plates, the underlying sinopia where the painted surface had become detached.The first volume of plates after Fra Bartolomeo includes ten works by this artist, the majority now in the monastery of San Marco, Florence. The second volume is devoted to one of his greatest works, the monumental but unfinished altarpiece known as the ‘Pala della Signoria’ (now in the Museo di San Marco). The plates in this volume are not recorded in Watson’s catalogue raisonné (F. J. B. Watson, ‘Thomas Patch (1725–1782)’, in The Walpole Society Annual Volume 28 (1939–40), pp. 15–50) nor mentioned by Maser (Edward A. Maser, ‘Giotto, Masaccio, Ghiberti and Thomas Patch’, in Festschrift Klaus Lankheit, 1973, pp. 192–99).These are the earliest reproductive prints after either artist and ‘were doubtless a contributory influence in the rise of a taste for pre-Renaissance painting in England’ (Watson, p. 27). Maser places Patch at ‘a turning point in the study of art’ where Italian artists before Raphael began to be appreciated for their own merit. In Maser’s view, Patch’s attempts at careful visual documentation are ‘enough to earn him a place, a small one perhaps, but a secure one nevertheless, among the pioneers of Kunstwissenschaft’ (ibid., p. 198).‘Patch, an intelligent and original artist with a sharp eye and a louche disposition, spent thirty-five years in Italy, mostly in Florence where he lived across the street from Horace Mann ... In 1770, with the publication of The Life of Massaccio, he embarked on a plan to publish books of engravings after “every celebrated author” ’ (Ingamells, A dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy 1701–1800, pp. 745–6). The present volumes followed, but the ambitious project was then abandoned and Patch’s next and last publication, in 1774, was a volume on Ghiberti’s bronze doors to the Baptistery in Florence. ‘Patch figured prominently as a connoisseur in Zoffany’s Tribuna (Windsor), where he is shown discussing the Venus of Urbino with Horace Mann’ (ibid., p. 746).Provenance: The front pastedown bears the inscription ‘S. T. 1st May 1787’. This is perhaps Robert Stearne Tighe (1760–1835) of Mitchelstown, co. Westmeath, FRS, who is known to have been in Florence on 27 February 1787, when he bought a copy of the two-volume edition of the Laws of Sardinia and Piedmont (Turin 1770), now British Library 660.i.5,6, which carries the ownership inscription “Stearn Tighe” (see Dennis E. Rhodes, ‘British and Irish book-collectors in Italy, 1467–1850’, in Bookbindings and other bibliophily. Essays in honour of Anthony Hobson, p. 268; see also Ingamells, p. 943).All three suites are rare. Evidence cited by Watson suggests that only forty sets of the Fra Bartolomeo and ‘Giotto’ series were issued before the plates were destroyed. NUC records one copy only of each work (Yale), as does COPAC (Liverpool). OCLC records just two copies of the first suite of Fra Bartolomeo plates (Harvard and National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum).

• GBP 8,500.00 > 其他币种价格
• 订书号：: C1217

• 书商: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)