Florentines plundering the Palazzo Medici. Plate 5, from a series of 15 plates depicting designs ...

Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635-1700) was a painter, engraver and etcher, born at Villa Bartola, near Perugia, in 1635. Prominent in antiquarian circles, he transferred early in life to Rome, where he became a pupil of Pierre Lemaire, known as 'Le petit Lemaire' or 'Lemaire-Poussin' (c. 1612-88), and of the celebrated classical painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). After Poussin's death, Bartoli collaborated frequently with the major Baroque era connoisseur, critic and antiquarian Giovanni Pietro Bellori, until the latter died in 1696, making the drawings and plates of objects that were accompanied by Bellori's texts. 

Although Bartoli had trained as a painter, he specialised as a draughtsman, excelling as a copyist after the Antique. In this latter capacity he joined the household of Cardinal Camillo Massimi: two volumes of drawings that he made while in this employment are preserved, one in the University Library, Glasgow, and the other in the College Library, Eton.
Bartoli is best known as an engraver of antique subjects, accompanying learned texts by the major connoisseur and antiquarian Giovanni Pietro Bellori, most notably of Trajan's Column (1673). Te Papa's etchings, however, come from an earlier, far smaller series of 15, reproducing the tapestries designed by Raphael's apprentices for the wainscotting under the Vatican tapestries in the Sistine Chapel. They mostly relate in their subject matter to episodes in the life of the Medici Pope, Leo X (1513-21). This print, Plate 5, depicts an episode connected with the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, when Florentines plundered the Palazzo Medici of books, statues and other treasures, as the Latin caption explains.

Te Papa's etching, together with its companion in the same series, Plate 4 (Te Papa 1910-0001-1/76-80) depicting the expulsion, is mounted in the so-called King George IV album, acquired by the Colonial Museum in 1910.

Sources:

British Museum, 'Pietro Santi  Bartoli (biographical details)', https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=133212

Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/650278

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    April 2019