ANTONIVS ALBICIVS NOBILIS FLORENTINVS

Beschrijving

Bust portrait of Antonio Albizzi in an oval. Antonio Albizzi (lat : Antonius Albicius) was an Italian jurist and genealogist, born in Florence in 1547. In 1576 he was in the service of Cardinal-Archduke Andreas of Austria. In 1585 he converted to Lutheranism and spent the rest of his life in the Protestant Imperial City of Kempten, where he died in 1626. His most famous work was Principum Christianorum Stemmata (Augsburg 1612), an unusual collection of engravings showing the family trees of the leading royal and noble houses of Europe of that time (and unusually also including the genealogy of the Turkish Emperors). The fine decorative engravings include family trees, portraits and coats of arms and are set against the backdrop of City views and panoramas closely copied from the Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Georg Braun & Franz Hogenberg (1572-1618). Lettered on the oval frame: ‘ANTONIVS ALBICIVS NOBILIS FLORENTINVS’; on the bottom: ‘Haec est ALBITII, Regum qui Stemmata scripsit. / Atque Ducum, artificis prodita imago manu. / Nobilitatis uti scriptor quoq[ue] Nobilis esset; / Nobilis hic genere est, Scriptore, et ingenio’.