Amico, Bernardino. Trattato delle Piante & Immagini de Sacri Edifizi di Terra Santa.

(ISRAEL, LAND OF).

Pietro Cecconcelli

Florence

1619-20

Engraved title-page. 34 double-page etchings by Jacques Callot printed from 38 plates with 46 numbered illustrations. Includes a view and plan of Jerusalem, views of buildings with many details and ground plans (“unsurpassed for centuries,” according to Tobler).

Tobler 87; Röhricht 837; Blackmer 31.

The geography and structures of the Holy Land were of profound interest to Christendom. However under Ottoman rule, most holy places were inaccessible to Europeans, making trustworthy accounts and images of them all the more valuable. Franciscan father Bernardino Amico of Gallipoli spent five years (1593-97) executing fine and exactly observed plans, drawings of façades and sections of buildings in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Cairo. Returning to Rome, he engaged Antonio Tempesta to finish his drawings and engrave the plates, which were published with his descriptive text in 1610. This, the second edition of 1620, includes etchings by the celebrated French engraver Jacques Callot. Amico’s images were the first accurate renderings of the Holy Sepulchre, and provided the foundation for modern scholarly archaeological research into the historic sites of the Holy Land.