Venetia

Description

Splendid and rare Lafreri School town-plan of Venice, engraved by Paolo Forlani and first published in 1567 as part of Il primo libro delle citta, et fortezze principali del mondo. The plates for this work were re-used by Giulio Ballino in 1569 with the addition of text in verse for his work De’ Disegni Delle Piu Illustri Citta…, which was published by Zaltieri.

Paolo Veronese Forlani was active in Venice between 1560 and 1574 as an engraver and merchant. He often collaborated with Gastaldi. Most likely he died during the great plague that struck Venice between 1575 and 1576. The so-called “Lafreri” school of mapmakers constitutes a loose group of engravers and printers working in Venice and Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century who often bound together collections of maps and prints to form atlases.