This is the titlepage of Sir Hans Sloane's Speculum album, which was transferred to the Department of Prints and Drawings in March 1947 (see below for more on its nature). It was then registered as 1947,0391.26(1 to 185): the acquisitions register contains a complete list of the 185 sheets in the order in which they were found on transfer (and in which presumably they were bound when acquired from Sloane). The album was then broken up, and eleven sheets containing maps were subsequently transferred back to the Map Room of the British Library in August 1951 (now in the sequence Maps 185.M.(2-25)), leaving 175 prints of the series in the BM (the Lafrery titlepage, which was not originally assigned its own sub-number, is included as a separate item in this total, making 175 sheets in all in the BM).

When they arrived in the Department the prints were re-bound in a new order according to their subject-matter: this paid no attention to the order in which they were found in Sloane's album (this new album was shelved at 174.c.31). Some sheets, which were not regarded as belonging to a 'Speculum', were not bound in the album, but placed in the unmounted series of Roman topography.

In 2007 the album 174.c.31 was taken apart, and the pages in the unmounted series brought together again. The opportunity was also taken to bring together other sheets in the BM collection related to the Speculum into the same series. This new series has been arranged in six imperial boxes.

The present arrangement within these boxes is complicated. Ideally we would wish to arrange all the sheets regardless of source into a single sequence in the order of Huelsen's catalogue (in the Olschki Festschrift of 1921: a photocopy is in the P&D; library). This is not possible because nearly half the prints from 174.c.31 are not described by Huelsen, for they did not form part of Lafrery's series but were issued by other publishers. The Sloane album is an extreme example of what is often called an 'extended Speculum': to a core of Lafrery's prints have been added by later owners prints of similar subject and size by many other publishers working in Rome in the XVI and XVII centuries. For this reason the present arrangement is a hybrid: the first four boxes contain the sheets of 174.c.31 in Sloane's album order, while the last two boxes contain the supplementary prints in Huelsen's order.

The Sloane album included a manuscript index in a XVIIc Italian hand (now placed in the first box). It lists 173 prints (172 plus1 double entry of n.138). All of the corresponding prints in the album are numbered in pen and ink but some have been cropped, thereby deleting the number. The earliest impressions date from the end of the 1530s (see for instance 1947.0319.26.41,42,44,161 and 123) and the latest are from the first half of the 17th century (see 1947,0319.26.35 and 163).

Eleven prints were added to the album after the Index was made (see 1947,0319.26.3,18,21,24,27,35,40,43,48,114 and 143) and were taken from a different set because they are numbered in a different hand. The latest impressions from this latter group date from the 1670s (see for example 1947.0319.26.40 and 43).

Many prints have had extensions added to the margins to bring the sheets up to a standard size for binding. Furthermore, on the verso of some prints it is possible to see traces of an ink offset from the impression that immediately follows (see 1947,0319.26.18, 23 and 27).

For a recent discussion of the phenomenon of the Speculum see Peter Parshall 'Antonio Lafreri's Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae', Print Quarterly, XXII, 2006, pp.3-28.