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The extensive and ambitious Antichità Romane is a testament to Piranesi’s artistic sensibility as well as his deep topographical knowledge of Rome gained through intense, first-hand study over the years.

PIRANESI ROME ETCHING SERIES

It was also not unusual for travellers on the Grand Tour to make up their own collections, and in the volume offered here, the Prima Parte is bound with another signal work by Piranesi: a first edition of the complete series of his precious manifesto of historical study of Roman antiquities, Antichità Romane de’ tempi della Repubblica, presented in the first state, in a later issue probably printed in the late 1760s and early 1770s.

As often happens with copies of the second edition, in the present volume the seventeen plates of the series are followed by other prints taken from different series. We are pleased to be offering a beautiful copy Piranesi’s Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive, presented in the second of six editions and the fifth of eight issues, according to Robison. He then continued to work on the series until his death in 1778, producing eight issues of this second edition (all subsequent editions of the work are posthumous). During the 1750s and 1760s he made a few changes to the plates and, by 1761, when he finally moved to a large house in Strada San Felice, from which he published and sold his prints for the rest of his life, the second edition of the Prima Parte was ready. Between 17 six different issues of the first edition appeared on the market. Piranesi did not publish a second part, but in the following years he etched other plates similar to the original ones and revised the entire work. The first edition of the Prima Parte was printed in 1743 and comprised thirteen plates in addition to a letter-press dedication.

Therefore having the idea of presenting to the world some of these images, but not hoping for an architect of these times who could effectively execute some of them… there seems to be no recourse than for me or some other modern architect to explain his ideas through his drawings.” At the same time criticizing the lack of achievement and potential for contemporary architecture, the statement speaks to the grandeur of Rome in “the meridian of its splendour” as well as the difficulty faced in translating the sublime ruins for the modern viewer. In the dedicatory pages, Piranesi explained, “These speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings, even such as those of the immortal Palladio, could never have succeeded in conveying, though I always kept them before my eyes. He nevertheless always considered himself an architect, and it was in the construction of Rome, present but especially past, that he found his greatest inspiration, as he later wrote:Īlready he was testing the very possibility of accurately rendering his encounters. He also spent a brief period in the studio of master painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and trained with vedutist Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782) in the art of etching and engraving. Struggling to find work in Venice, Piranesi moved to Rome in the 1740s, where he worked as a draughtsman for Marco Foscarini, the Venetian ambassador of Pope Benedict XIV.

PIRANESI ROME ETCHING HOW TO

There he also learned the craft of stage design, becoming familiar with principles of lighting and how to create dramatic effects through perspective that would come to have such great impact in his work. Piranesi was likewise destined to become an architect and apprenticed with his uncle in Venice. His father was a stonemason and master builder and his mother was the eldest sister of Matteo Lucchesi, a prominent architect and engineer with aristocratic connections. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (4 October 1720 - 9 November 1778) was a Venetian, born in Mogliano Veneto, but it was in Rome that he claimed his place as the greatest printmaker of the eighteenth century.

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