Ridolfi is the pseudonym of William Carey.

15A 5368 is inscribed, in upper margin of title : "Respectfully presented to the Marquess of Londonderry." This would have been Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess, 1778-1854, the Army officer and diplomat. Recent marbled boards, lettered on spine.

The author, William Carey (1759-1839), was an Irish born art critic and dealer and a brother of Mathew Carey (1760-1839). "By the late 1790s William Carey was a dealer in prints and paintings in London, and had discontinued engraving owing to an accident. In 1801, doubtless partly motivated by business concerns, he published the first of over twenty books and pamphlets arguing the benefits of annual fine arts exhibitions, organized by national and regional institutions, as a means of cultivating patronage of British artists and fighting foreign competition. Although he stated that such principles arose from a 'disinterested public spirit', he noted that 'manufacturing and commercial interests' were at one with a desire for a domestically inclined national consensus on taste in the fine arts (W. P. Carey, Observations on the Primary Object of the British Institution, 1829). Carey was also involved in the encouragement of unknown artists, most notably Francis Chantrey, in relation to employment on public monuments, and he helped to establish and publicize private collections of British art. His views were both criticized and praised in periodic literature." - [Nicholas Grindle in ODNB]

Physical description: 82 pages ; 22 cm.