Giovanni Battista Cavalieri

Giovanni Battista Cavalieri (Giovanni Battista de 'Cavalleris) (* 1525 in Villa Lagarina ; † July 23, 1601 in Rome ) was an Italian engraver, etcher and publisher.

biography

Little is known about his youth and training. Cavalieri first worked in Venice, then in Rome, where he had learned the art of etching from Marcantonio Raimondi and Enea Vico . His oeuvre includes over 380 engravings and etchings, most of which are works by other masters of his time, such as Michelangelo , Raffael , Baccio Bandinelli , Polidoro da Caravaggio , Livio Agresti , Daniele da Volterra , Francesco Salviati and others. a. reproduce. Cavalieri signed his works with the monogram "CB".

Cavalieri's success is mainly due to the documentation of Roman antiquities, especially in the four volumes Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae , which were published in Rome in 1585 and 1593 and in which ancient statues from the most important Roman collections as well as buildings are depicted. For Antonio Ciccarelli's Le Vite de 'Pontifici (Rome 1588) he created 230 portraits of popes.

Cavalieri also contributed to the spread of the iconographic repertoire of the Counter-Reformation, such as an Ecce homo in the collection of the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, or a Madonna of Loreto or a Madonna of the Rosary.

His work Opera nel a quale vie molti Mostri de tute le parti del mondo antichi et moderni (Rome 1585) contains numerous fantasy monsters and fabulous characters. He was inspired by Hans Burgkmair's woodcuts, which appeared in the supplementary part to Giovanni Botero's Delle relationi universali (Venetia: Alessandro de Vecchi 1618). Although Burkmair's woodcuts from the work of 1618 did not appear until after Cavalieri's work, these had already been published in the first half of the 16th century.

His four books, Antiquarum Statuarum Urbis Roma, served as models for numerous figures in the park and in the water features of Hellbrunn Palace in Salzburg, built by Prince Archbishop Markus Sittikus . The Hercules figure in the Dietrichsruh of the Salzburg Residence was created after Cavalieri's Antiquarum Statuarum Urbis Romae Primus Et Secundus Liber (Roma 1585, fol. 61). The dolphin fountain in Frohnburg Castle was designed according to Cavalieri's model ( Antiquarum Statuarum Urbis Romae Primus Et Secundus Liber , Roma 1593, fol. 63). A girl character in the vestibule to lock Mirabell is the laterally inverted copy of a nymph Diana (Cavalieri 1585, fol. 35).

Works

• Opera nel a quale vie molti Mostri de tute le parti del mondo antichi et moderni con le dechiarationi a ciascheduno fine al presento anno 1585 , Romae 1585.
• Antiquarum Statuarum Urbis Romae Primus Et Secundus Liber , Romae 1585. [1]
• Le Vite de 'pontefici, di Antonio Ciccarelli, [...] con l'effigie di Giovan Battista de Cavallieri , Rome 1588. [2]
• Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae tertius et quartus liber , Romae 1593. [3]

literature

• Paola Pizzamano (Ed.): Giovanni Battista Cavalieri: Un incisore trentino nella Roma dei Papi del Cinquecento. Nicolodi Editore, Rovereto 2001.