GORI, Antonio Francesco.

Monumentum sive columbarium libertorum et servorum Liviae Augustae et Caesarum, Romae detectum in Via Appia, anno MDCCXXVI ...

Florence, apud Tartinium & Franchium, 1727. Folio, pp. xxxvi, 254, [2], with 21 engraved plates (13double-page), 3 engraved tail-pieces, 2 engraved head-pieces, 3 engraved initials, many woodcuts of funerary inscriptions in the text, title-page printed in red and black and with large engraved vignette; a very good, large, clean and crisp copy bound in contemporary vellum, spine with gilt lettered label, red speckled edges. First edition and one of the earliest works published by the great antiquary A.F. Gori (1691-1757). He describes, investigates and illustrates the Columbarium of Livia discovered on the Via Appia in 1726. The Columbarium, a communal tomb and repository for urns, contained the ashes of dead men (free and slaves) from the household of Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus. The work is sumptuously produced with fine head- and tail-pieces incorporating ancient gems and other small-scale antiquities from contemporary collections. The fine plates show the Columbarium, a plan, the burial halls with its myriad niches lining the walls, a number of fine decorated Roman sarcophagi, and other funerary antiquities discovered there. Each plate is dedicated to an influential patron, among them Joseph Smith and Sir Thomas Dereham.The discovery of the Columbarium also caught the attention of the then director of antiquities in Rome, Francesco Bianchini, who published his findings in a 87 page book, Camera ed iscrizioni sepolcrali ... della casa d'Augusto which appeared in the same year. Bianchini was at the end of his illustrious career while Gori had just started his, but both men published on the most important archaeological discovery of 1726.Cicognara 3750; Rosetti, Rome, 5464; Borroni 8100.

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