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Etched by Ambrogio Brambilla (active 1579-99) after his own drawing. Signed and dated in the plate "Io. Ambr. Bram. Inv et fe. 1579". Published by Claudio Duchetti, whose name appears at the foot of the plate. Two other states were printed (in the 17th c.). The second state (1602) bore the address of Giovanni Orlandi, which in the third state (printed ca. 1614) was abraded and replaced by that of Van Schoel Hendrick van Schoel. A fine copy of this marvelous print showing the spectacular fireworks display (la girandola) at Rome s Castel Sant Angelo in 1579 on the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572-1585).The scene is shown from a vantage point of an onlooker in what is now the Tor di Nona neighborhood on the near side of the Ponte Sant Angelo. This is probably the earliest print depicting this event. From the fifteenth well into the nineteenth century, the Girandola at the Castel Sant'Angelo was Rome's most famous fireworks display. Two elements make it immediately recognizable: the massive cylinder of the castle and the explosion of rockets. The first documented exhibition of fireworks in Rome took place in 1410, but it was only in 1471, at the coronation of Sixtus IV, that fireworks began to be set off at the Castel Sant'Angelo, the fortress-like structure originally built as Hadrian's mausoleum. The earliest published description of the Girandola was in 1540, in Vannoccio Biringuccio's Pirotechnia: "They make use of the whole castle, which is indeed a very pleasing shape. They shoot many rockets that are a palmo [about nine inches] long and hold three to four ounces of powder each. These are constructed so that after they have moved upward with a long tail and seem to be finished they burst and each one sends forth anew six or eight rockets. Fire tubes are also made and small girandolas, flames, and lights, and even the coat of arms of the pope is composed in fire." The etching by Brambilla, probably the earliest print of the Girandola, has an inscription describing the order of events, as enthusiastic as it is lengthy. It reports that "all the windows, bell towers, and balconies of the city are illuminated." At a sign from the papal palace the Girandola begins with mortars and artillery "such that the whole city trembles"; when the rockets are unleashed, "it seems as if the sky has opened, and that all the stars are falling to earth, a truly stupendous thing and most marvelous to see."… This extraordinary sight was recreated every year at Easter and on June 28, the eve of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, as well as for the election and coronation of a new pope. The Girandola remained a high point on the itinerary of visitors to Rome until the late 1800s, when it was feared that continuing the explosions could do irreparable damage to the fabric of the building. Many nineteenth-century English writers described it. Charles Dickens, in 1845, wrote not only of the spectacle but also of the aftermath: "The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of every color, size, and speed. In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river, and half a dozen men and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their hands, moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the press, had the whole scene to themselves."(Suzanne Boorsch: Fireworks! Four Centuries of Pyrotechnics in Prints and Drawings, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 2000, exhibition cat., p 38-39) Among the features labeled in the print is the "Luogo di Giustizia", a place for executions. In other prints showing this structure. heads on stakes and bodies swinging from the gallows can be seen. Between the smell of the rotting heads and the odors emanating from the fish market (als.
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