Fine impression with partly small margins around the plate.

An illustration to Lodge’s own translation of Giacomo Barri's (Jacques de Pierre de Barri 1636 ca. – 1690) 'Viaggio pittoresco d'Italia'. 'The Painter's Voyage of Italy' (London, Thomas Flesher, 1679) (1)

The source of this image a portrait of the painter Pietro da Cortona (1596/7 – 1669) is unknown and probably lost.

Lodge was a topographical draughtsman and etcher. Both his parents came from prosperous families of Leeds merchants in the cloth trade. He went to Jesus College, Cambridge, and then studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London, but on inheriting an income of £300 a year had no further need to earn a living. He took up painting, drawing and etching as an amateur at Cambridge. In 1670 he accompanied Thomas Belasyse, Lord Fauconberg, the new ambassador to Venice, and remained in Italy for two years. After his return he published a translation of Giacomo Barri's guidebook under the title The Painter's voyage of Italy, 1679, which he illustrated with his own etchings of artists' portraits. Lodge was a close friend of Francis Place, with whom he made a sketching tour in Wales in 1678 at the height of the Popish Plot fever, and both were arrested as Jesuit spies. (2)

A fine example of an etcher active in Stuart Britain.

1.     See: Angelo Maria Monaco, 'GB francese e il suo Viaggio Pittorico d'Italia', Florence 2014.

2.     See: Antony Griffiths, 'The Print in Stuart Britain', BM 1998 pp. 253-4. And K. Sloan, 'A Noble Art: Drawing Masters and Amateurs, 1600-1800', BM 2000, pp. 38-9