Title and plate 1 depicting the cries (trades) of Rome, here including vendors of goldfish, Milanese swords, hats etc, from the 'Descrición de las artes que se llaman para los calles de la ciudad de Roma'

This is the first of a group comprising seventeen sheets of thirty-five hand-coloured engravings depicting the cries (trades) of Rome. The series was produced in Bassano (Veneto, Italy) by the Remondini publishing firm for the Spanish market. The first sheet carries the title in Spanish, whereas the descriptions of each of the 198 figures and their occupations in Italian (Roman dialect ‘Romancino’), run along the bottom of each plate. The figures are copied from a 1582 engraving by Ambrogio Brambilla published by Claudio Duchetti: ‘Ritratto de quelli che vanno vendendo et lavorando per Roma con la nova agionta de tutti quelli che nelle altre mancavano sin al presente’. The Remondini group comprises more than one series of works. Plates are numbered 1 through 12 (forming the first group), and there is an additional group that, with the exception of a couple of sheets, are not numbered. The first group of prints is listed in the 1791 Remondini stocklist (no. 639): ‘Una pontada di 12 rami di francesina rappresentanti le differenti arti di Roma’.

See: Alberto Milano, ‘Colporteurs. I venditori di stampe e libri e il loro pubblico’, Milan, Edizioni Medusa, 2015, pp. 26–31 and cat.no. 15, pp. 151–53. 　

Maria Beatrice Sirolesi, ‘I venditori ambulanti di Roma. I mercanti girovaghi del Seicento con le curiose grida de richiamo nelle incisioni del Remondini’, Rome, Edizioni della Città, 1994.