Vedute del Museo Pio-Clementino.

Magnificent series of extra-large plates illustrating the Vatican Museum at the end of the eighteenth century by Vincenzo Feoli (1750 - 1831).

The Pio-Clementino museum, named after the two popes who oversaw its foundation, Clement XIV Ganganelli (1769-1774) and Pius VI Braschi (1775-1799), houses the nucleus of the pontifical collections of classical sculpture dates back to the original collection of pope Julius II (1503-1513) which was housed in the Cortile delle Statue (today the Octagonal Court). During the second half of the 18th century the pontifical collections were enormously expanded both as a result of excavations being carried out in Rome and Lazio, and by donations from collectors and antiquaries. The influence of Enlightenment thinking resulted in the inauguration of a museum in the modern sense, open to the public and explicitly charged with the task of safeguarding antique works of art, and promoting the study and understanding of them.

Vincenzo Feoli 1750 –1831) was an Italian artist engraver of topographic, architectural and archaeological drawings, whose skills were highly renowned and appreciated in his own lifetime. In 1790 he engraved twenty-four large plates depicting the new rooms of the Vatican Museum of Antiquities (Pio-Clementino Museum), radically renovated by Pius VI and celebrated with a seven-volume catalogue by Giambattista and Ennio Quirino Visconti. These three plates are from this collection.