La Corsa dei Cavalli

Corsa dei cavalli is a beautiful etching on copper, printed on laid paper, hand-colored brightly with gouache.

The artwork is unsigned, but it is part of the 20 plates engraved in 1820 by the Swedish artist Carl Gustaf Hjalmar Mörner (or umo?rner) during his stay in Rome, certainly influenced by the style and manner of the coeval folkloric prints made by Bartolomeo Pinelli (cfr. Hermanin F., Una collezione di stampe e disegni dell’antico carnevale romano , Bollettino d’Arte, Rome, year I, January 1907, p. 28, cit.).

The title is engraved on plate on the lower center; the print is numbered 13 on the lower right. The quality and the conditions of preservation of this original print are very good, except for a light stain on the higher right margin and a small tear on the lower left margin.

This original artwork represents a moment in the Berber horse race that used to take place in Rome during the famous Carnival and, more precisely, the wait for the passage of the skittish horses that ran along the Via Lata, the current Via del Corso, from Piazza del Popolo to Piazza Venezia. The Roman citizens used to rent a seat along the street to attend the event that was for obvious reasons very dangerous and that was thus later forbidden from 1874. Here many men and women, some in Carnival costumes, gathered on the margin of the street, controlled by some gendarmes.

This original print, then, is a folkloric and animated representation of Roman life during the Carnival, beautifully rendered also thanks to the use of intense and bright colors.