Gaetano Zompini - Le Arti che Vanno per Via nella Citta di Venezia, inventate ed incise. - 1785/1832

Small folio, 385 x 280 mm,renewed cloth spine on contemporary marbled boards on red endl-eaves. Engraved title page, engraved list of plates and 60 plates, complete as listed for. Presents as usual some foxing, thumbing and offsetting, otherwise a good copy, holding firm of this 60 fine Engraved plates of venetian Trades with Italian inscription on wove paper. Later edition regardless the date. Although the frontispiece is dated 1785 , it seems to be of late edition as some plates have watermarks dated 1832. The Venice of the Arts by Gaetano Zompini is the Venice of Carlo Goldoni, the great contemporary playwright of the engraver and very active, at the time of the first release of Zompinian etchings, in his theatrical production. Just as Goldoni's comedies depict in detail the many facets of Venetian society, Zompini's illustrations graphically summarize everyday habits and customs: a magnifying glass of life in the calli, of a busy populace in a thousand chores. The triplets that accompany the illustration of each art decisively complete the fresco with their Venetian dialect, giving us a small encyclopedia of information on the material culture of mid-eighteenth-century Venice. Ref. : Colas number 3121.