Veterum Illustrium Philosophorum Poetarum Rhetorum et Oratorum Imagines Ex vetustis Nummis, Gemmis, Hermis, Marmoribus, aliisque Antiquis Monumentis desumptae. A Io: Petro ellorio. Christinae Reginae Augustae Bibliothecdario, & Antiquario Expositionibus Illustratae

Romae, Apud Io: Iocbumde Rubeis ad Templum S. Mariae de Pace suis sumptibus, & cura, cum Privilegio Summi Pontificis. 1685. Folio, 338 x 225 mms., pp. [x], 20 [21 - 22 divisional title], 16 [2], 15 [16 errata], engraved frontispiece and 92 full-page engraved plates, contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards; joints cracked and front cover holding on for dear life, boards worn. A working copy. The painter, biographer, and antiquary Giovani Pietro Bellori was" brought up in the household of Francesco Angeloni, a well-to-do writer, collector, and antiquarian. It was Angeloni who established the intellectual climate in which Bellori's interests developed. Angeloni assembled, probably with Bellori's help, what was then one of the finest private collections of classical antiquities, important enough to be noted in contemporary guidebooks.... His Notes on Museums, a guide to the art treasures of Rome, which appeared in 1664, contains an addendum on the remains of ancient Roman painting that is said to be the first essay ever written on this subject. Both before and after this date he worked on his Lives of the Modern Artists, which was published in 1672" (Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe: "Art & Theory in Baroque Europe").