L’attività grafica di Agostino Tofanelli (1768-1834). Mercato delle stampe e collezionismo privato a Roma alla fine del Settecento

The graphic activity of Agostino Tofanelli (1768- 1834). The print market and private collecting in Rome at the end of the 18th century · Agostino Tofanelli was a draughtsman who became keeper, conservator and then director of the Capitoline Museum from 1801 until he died in 1834. First in the Campitelli district and then at Trinità dei Monti, Agostino studied jointly with the young protagonists of the early days of Neoclassicism, coming into contact with the most innovative creative movements in Gavin Hamilton’s atelier. His training coincided with the favourable wave of commissions that his more renowned brother Stefano was attracting thanks to his collaboration with Rafaello Morghen and Bernardino Nocchi and the revitalised production of translation prints in Rome, to which he contributed by producing many drawings of the most appreciated examples of seventeenth-century classicism, paintings in private collections later engraved for promotional purposes for the market. In light of new documentary traces found in the State Archives and the State Library of Lucca, the article outlines the artist’s graphic activity and the relations in the Roman art market. By addressing not only questions of patronage but also the history and provenance of works that have gone missing, the article allows us to reconstruct another piece of artistic life in the City during the ephemeral Napoleonic reign and at the dawn of the Restoration.