PIERALISI, Sante.

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Osservazioni sul musaico di Palestrina. First edition, presentation copy from the prince of Palestrina, Enrico Barberini-Colonna (1823-1889), inscribed on the front wrapper to the French politician Frédéric-Alfred-Pierre, comte de Falloux (1811-1886), instigator of the Falloux Laws, which promoted Catholic education in French schools under Napoleon III. A large and well-illustrated study of the Nile mosaic of Palestrina, a Roman floor mosaic (circa 100 BCE) depicting the Nile in its passage from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean, showing various animals of the river and Ptolemaic Greeks and Aethiopians in hunting scenes. The mosaic is among the earliest examples of Roman Nilotic landscape art, and exhibits the Roman fascination with Egyptian exoticism. Part of a sacred grotto, the mosaic passed to the Barberini family in the 17th century, who removed much of the mosaic from the setting, eventually placing it in the Palazzo Barberini in Palestrina, where it remains today. The author of this study, Sante Pieralisi (1802-1887), was the librarian at the Barberini Library in Rome.

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