Ciro Ferri delineavit, Cornelis Bloemaert sculpsit: una collaborazione artistica per due antiporte di committenza medicea

This article focuses on the artistic collaboration between the painter Ciro Ferri and the engraver Cornelis Bloemaert for the production of two frontispieces commissioned by the Medici. The first one depicts the Allegory of the branches of mathematics for Carlo Rinaldini’s treatise Ars analytica mathematum (1665) and the second one Saint Paul preaching in the Areopagus engraved for Paolo Segneri’s collection of sermons, titled Quaresimale (1679). New archival evidence from the Archivio di Stato di Firenze sheds more light on the complex relations at play among artists, patrons, and book authors, especially in the case of Paolo Segneri. His close involvement into the design process can at last explain the differences between the final print and Ferri’s bozzetto, now held at Windsor Castle. The article also discusses the material fabrication of frontispieces (spanning from the sourcing of paper to obtaining the imprimatur and the publicetur from the Roman authorities controlling censorship, in particular the maestro del Sacro Palazzo Apostolico); the emergence of a novel discourse on the art of chalcography, influenced by the literature on painting; and the collecting practices of the last Medici, who developed an unprecedented interest in preserving engraved copper plates. As a result, the richly documented case studies presented in the article offer an insight into this overlooked aspect of Medici patronage and the material history of printmaking in seventeenth-century Rome and Florence.