PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista

The picture shows the frontispiece of the first edition of Piranesi’s Prisons series.

Piranesi’s early and most famous series of plates, the Carceri d’Invenzione were first issued in 1745 and re-etched in 1760-61. They are romantic phantasmagorias derived from Baroque opera sets.

In the 1760s Piranesi adopted a stance of pluralistic openness with regard to the most diverse styles of antiquity, none of which could claim sole preeminence. This eclectic attitude, which allowed access to the cultural achievements of history free of value judgments, found visual expression in his Diverse Maniere d’adornare i Cammini (Diverse ways of ornamenting chimneypieces), published in 1769, which contains a freely assorted collection of Greek, Etruscan, Roman and even Egyptian forms.

The picture shows Egyptian-style wall decorations of the Caff� Inglese in Rome.

It was the work of Piranesi, the most dazzling artist of his age, which demonstrated how architecture and city were viewed during the transition from the late Baroque to the early Neo-classical style.

Piranesi’s representations of city and architecture were theatrical. Drama and poetry were the main themes of his engravings, the main subjects of which were his famous picturesque ruins. The approach and technique were essentially those of a late Baroque artist. This was demonstrated in the exaggerated proportions and the predominance of the diagonals reflecting the influence of the diagonal stage. His work as an architect was similar, particularly his plans for Santa Maria del Priorato. The square and the garden maze designed for the richly decorated church fa�ade, the interior, and, above all, the altar provide a series of bizarre compositions drawn from archeological finds and following almost incidentally on from each other. Their settings are, however, highly effective.

The picture shows the fa�ade of the church.

The picture shows the second frontispiece of Vol. III of Le Antichità Romane, published in four volumes in 1756 in Rome. Piranesi was much less interested in objectively reproducing Roman ruins than in suggestively depicting them in exaggerated form in picturesque circumstances.

It was the work of Piranesi, the most dazzling artist of his age, which demonstrated how architecture and city were viewed during the transition from the late Baroque to the early Neo-classical style.

Piranesi’s representations of city and architecture were theatrical. Drama and poetry were the main themes of his engravings, the main subjects of which were his famous picturesque ruins. The approach and technique were essentially those of a late Baroque artist. This was demonstrated in the exaggerated proportions and the predominance of the diagonals reflecting the influence of the diagonal stage. His work as an architect was similar, particularly his plans for Santa Maria del Priorato. The square and the garden maze designed for the richly decorated church fa�ade, the interior, and, above all, the altar provide a series of bizarre compositions drawn from archeological finds and following almost incidentally on from each other. Their settings are, however, highly effective.

The picture shows the altar.

The Palazzo Barberini was designed by Carlo Maderno, and executed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini in 1626-29.

The Porto di Ripetta was an exedra into the river bank in Rome, the stepped ramps of which pick up and follow the natural incline. Alessandro Specchi, a student of Carlo Fontana who had become well-known as an engraver, created this design. This project in front of the church of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni led Specchi and Fontana towards an increasing use of dynamic perspectives. The port was destroyed in 1874 with the development of flood defences and the river bank road of Lungotevere, and replaced by Rome’s Ponte Cavour, and his fountain at the top of the port was moved to a nearby site.

The view of the port was recorded in etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Although a native of Venice, Piranesi went to Rome at 20 and spent most of his life in that ancient city that was to inspire most of his nearly one thousand etchings. He studied architecture, engineering, and stage design, and his best known series, Carceri (Prisons), consisted of 14 plates depicting stage prisons that he himself described as “capricious inventions”. The spatial and architectural ambiguities, as well as the dramatic use of light and form, are characteristic of this series.

This print is sheet 3 of the series “Prisons”.

In comparison with the first prison designs, which also appeared in the 18th century, Piranesi’s imaginary constructions are striking for their irrationality. A keen scholar of ancient architecture, he invests them with fine proportions, yet more convincingly depicts chaos, something that still repelled his contemporaries but would soon become attractive to the Romantics - artists and naturalists.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

From the mid 1750s, Piranesi intensified the dramatic nature and visual impact of the panels that he was adding to his series of Vedute di Roma, adopting important innovations in his illustrative techniques, such as the aerial view of complex structures, including the Colosseum and ancient baths. The monumental emphasis of this view of the Baths of Caracalla, then known as the Antonine Baths, is emblematic of a system of representation that as well as providing perspective views, lingers over the description of materials and construction techniques.

The view of the structure is taken from the south, bypassing the slopes of Caelian Hill and embracing the churches and monasteries that stand out from the compressed profile of the mountains. The vegetation contributes to the effective rendering of the suburban setting, populated with travellers, prostitutes, and ragamuffins hiding among the ruins, lending a tragic, contemporary feel to the already melancholy nature of the ruins.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

No artist has been able to represent the manifold settings of Rome’s major ancient and modern monuments better than Piranesi, who does so with the unifying vision of a specific interpretation of space. The ruins, modern villas and urban views are integrated with changing scenes of the real city, creating a report that is also a perfect souvenir. The protagonists of this view are the remains of the Forum of Nerva, the so-called Colonnacce of the Temple of Minerva, which even today, at the Imperial Forums, support a fascia with a bas-relief frieze and statue of the goddess. The structure stands like a mysterious wreckage, half submersed by the waned grandeur that has now become home to craftsmen. With skilful visual expedients, Piranesi turns it into a perfect theatrical backdrop that breaks through, on the right, into the narrow perspective of a street, an axis in the urban setting, later gutted by urban demolition and at the end of which, there is a glimpse of the Colosseum.

This splendid etching inspired Hubert Robert’s painting of The Ponte Solario. Piranesi emphasized the bulk of the architectural monument which has an almost sinister appearance.

The etching was part of Piranesi’s ‘Vedute di Roma.’

Giovanni Battista Piranesi not only produced an incredible number of etchings and engravings, but is known to have written an autobiography which was reputedly as full of swashbuckling incidents as that of Benvenuto Cellini. His two sons knew this manuscript and, with additions based on their recollections, prepared their own version, which was submitted to an English publisher. Both versions are lost. In 1831 Francesco Piranesi did, however, publish an account of his father’s career, part of which reads: “In an age of frivolities, he boldly and singlehanded dared to strike out for himself on a new road to fame: and in dedicating his talent to the recording and illustrating from ancient writers the records of former times, he met with a success as great as it deserved, combining, as he did, all that was beautiful in art with all that was interesting in the remains of antiquity.”

Born in Venice, Piranesi yearned for Rome, and there he lived and worked most of his lifetime, dedicating himself to studying, measuring, and drawing its architectural treasures. From Giuseppe Vasi he had learned etching and engraving, and most of his plates are a mixture of these two techniques. It is believed that during his residence in Venice he also knew and studied the etchings of Tiepolo.

Certainly Piranesi’s most often discussed prints are in his etched Prison series, the Carceri d’Innenzione. A famous description comes from De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. De Quincey never saw Piranesi’s plates, but obviously was very moved by the verbal description of them given by his friend, the poet and essayist Coleridge.

Piranesi was twenty-two when he composed his sixteen fantasies. They were reissued about sixteen years later. They may be seen in two states: the first more freely drawn and lightly etched, the final one (to which this illustration belongs) reworked with deep, dark lines and more ominous interiors. These etchings were destined to influence countless scenic designers in preparing their sets of dungeons and torture chambers.

During the 1770s Piranesi visited Pompeii on several occasions. A total of twelve Piranesi drawings showing various locations in Pompeii survive today. The scene depicted here is located close to the Herculaneum gates and can still be found today. Everything is, however, rather more modest in appearance than this drawing would indicate.

This engraving belongs to the series of prints entitled Vedute di Roma, 1748-78.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

Piranesi’s definition of the peculiar urban image, which brings together the most complete synthesis of the artist’s genius as an engraver, has influenced the way in which the urban fabric of Rome has been seen, even in modern times, through a special ability to read and interpret space. For its symbolic worth, which is the latest of his views of St Peter’s Square included in the Vedute series, the artist chooses an aerial perspective, with an evocative power that would be inconceivable to our modern-day visual sensitivity.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

This is an ideal equivalent to the view with St Peter’s and the Vatican, in the splendour of its urban setting. This late panel from the Vedute series reveals the way in which the Lateran building seemed, even in the 18th century, the destination of a path that was not very frequently on the usual tourist trail, the final step in a traditional pilgrimage only followed on festive days, but mainly isolated on the margins of the Aurelian Walls. An antithesis to the monumental and modern vision of the Lateran Basilica, as offered by Piranesi on many other occasions, the view isolates the architecture - transformed by a radical urban intervention under Sixtus V - in an open space.

This print shows the nave of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome prior to the fire of 1823.

Pope Leo the Great (440-461) renovated the basilica which had been built in the late fourth century. The paintings in the nave were part of these renovations, and they introduced a decorative scheme that would be imitated into the High Middle Ages not only in Rome itself but in many places in its vicinity and more distant surroundings. A fire in 1823 destroyed the stately building as well as the frescoes, but the individual scenes and figures depicted there, as well as their sequence, have been preserved in paintings, drawings, and engravings.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

The wealth of pieces by Piranesi includes a series of etchings of great “Views of Rome”, begun around 1747 and continually increased to a total of 138 panels. It is the artist’s best-known and most successful work. It became a means for systematic diffusion of the grandiloquent image of Papal Rome and the haunting, grandiose nature of its “talking ruins”. In an expanding print market, where competition was rife when it came to urban scenes, Piranesi’s work became a means to convey a new vision of the city and its stories.

By careful choice of a specific viewpoint to represent one of the places that best evokes the “modern” city, this view has a visual axis along the Via del Babuino and perspective focus in the Fontana della Barcaccia by Bernini. The particular angle of the frame, emphasised by the light falling from the slopes of the Pincio, adds a scenographic touch to the Piazza di Spagna, already a focus destination for international tourism, artistic production and the art and antiques market, a crossroad for collectors and travellers from all over Europe.

This etching belongs to the series Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).

This view describes the fringes of the Forum, or Campo Vaccino, the vicinity of which is even marked by the modern-day names of roads such as Via dei Foraggi or Via dei Fienili.