Serie di trecento tavole in rame rappresentanti pitture di vasi degli antichi etrusci

[PASSERI, Giovanni Battista (1694-1780).] Serie di trecento tavole in rame rappresentanti pitture di vasi degli antichi etrusci tratti dalla biblioteca Vaticana e da altri museum d'Italia. Rome: Venanzio Monaldini, 1787.
Mewes-Blackmer copy of the second edition of Passeri's important catalogue of vases. The 18th-century saw both Enlightenment antiquarianism's increasing fascination with ancient vase painting as well as "Etruscomania"—enthusiasm for the rich non-Roman culture inhabiting Western Italy in antiquity. Vases unearthed in Italy had for a long time been thought to be of Etruscan origin, but there was a growing understanding, aided by the excavations of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, that the vases were actually Greek. Passeri, working as an antiquary for the Duke of Tuscany, may have been encouraged to attribute them to the Etruscans due to his Tuscan patron; not long after, however, under the influence of Winckelmann and other Hellenophiles the Etruscans began to fall from favor as inferior "imitators" of the superior Greeks. This second edition was issued without text. Blackmer 1266 (this copy); Brunet 4:418; Vinet 1526.
Three volumes, folio (427 x 264mm). 3 hand-colored frontispieces, hand-colored titles, and 300 hand-colored plates, one of which double-page (dampstaining to lower and upper margins, mostly in vols 1-3). Contemporary half calf over decorated paper boards (edges worn). Provenance: small library label at head of each volume – Charles-Édouard Mewes (1889-1969, son of famous architect and collector Charles-Frédéric Mewes; bookplate) – Henry Blackmer (bookplate).