Prometheus and Deucalion at the foot of the mount Chigi. 1665-1667.
Giovanni Battista Falda
* 1643 in Valduggia † 1678 in Rome
Etching after Giovanni Battista Gaulli known as Baciccio (Genoa 1639 – Rome 1709). Size of plate: 20 x 32 cm. Size of sheet: 24.2 x 35 cm.
Watermark: anchor and star inside a circle.
Literature: P. Bellini, Italian Masters of the Seventeenth Century. Giovanni Battista Falda (The Illustrated Bartsch, 47. Commentary part 2), New York 1993, pp. 102, 104;
A. Angelini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e i Chigi tra Roma e Siena, Siena 1998, pp. 285-286.
This illustration is the frontispiece of the second volume of 'Nuovo teatro delle fabbriche et edificii in prospettiva di Roma moderna' by Gian Giacomo Rossi, published in Rome in 1667. It is dedicated to the prince Mario Chigi (1594-1669), brother of Pope Alexander VII and father of Cardinal Flavio Chigi. The myth of Prometheus and Deucalion is used as an allegory of the sculpture renaissance during the kingdom of Pope Alexander VII.
The composition is after the central part of a drawing by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Baciccio, now in the National Museum of Stockholm (inv. NM Anck.197). In the same drawing, Giovanni Battista Falda was the author of the view of Rome in the background.
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