BY ANTONIO DE ANGELIS, ROME 1806, SIGNED ON THE REVERSE 'ANTONIO DEANGELIS FECI IN ROMA 1806'

The graceful seven-arched bridge of Ponte Lucano stretches across the banks of the Anio River. Dating from the first century BC and extending the ancient consular road of Via Tiburtina, the bridge served the road from Tivoli to Rome until the mid-twentieth century and remained in use to cars until just a few years ago. The bridge forms part of an archaeological landscape that includes the remains of the mausoleum of Plautii, built in the first century BC, and a sixteenth century public inn. It also acts as a gateway to the Villa Adriana, now a world heritage site. Antonio De Angelis is celebrated as one of the best mosaicists active during the early years of the 19th Century in Rome and Milan, and is mentioned in a May 19, 1816 entry in the Archivo della Reverenda Fabbrica di San Pietro: listed as a mosaicist who also worked outside the Vatican Studios (D. Petochi, Mosaici Minuti Romani, Florence, 1981, p. 55). Antonio and Giuseppe De Angelis were probably of the same family as Domenico de Angelis who was Director of the Vatican mosaic workshop from 1795-1803 and worked on a mosaic table known as Achilles Heel, comissioned by Napoleon, and later given by the pope Leo XII to Charles X of France (L'Ami de la Religion et du Roi, Paris, 1827, P. 205).