When he took up printmaking, it was to make ends meet, and his elaborate title pages announced the authorship of “Giambattista Piranesi, Venetian Architect,” but he died with just one significant architectural project to his name. The actual Piranesi was born in the Veneto in 1720 and went to Rome at the age of nineteen with the dream of becoming an architect. And throughout the two centuries that followed, Giovanni Battista Piranesi the person and Piranesi the tormented trope have shared space in the world like a badly executed hologram: never invisible, never quite clear. And so on, until the unfinished stairs and the hopeless Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall.ĭe Quincey never claimed to have seen the etching in question-he was riffing on hearsay from Coleridge-so our compassion is being called into play for an imaginary figure in an imaginary prison in an imaginary etching. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived…. You perceived a staircase and upon this, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself…. “Creeping along the sides of the walls,” De Quincey wrote, He wasn’t worried about the real Piranesi, long dead by then he was considering the plight of an etched figure he understood to be Piranesi in one of the artist’s Carceri d’invenzione ( Imaginary Prisons). They created a perception of antiquity lasting to our own time.“Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi,” mused Thomas De Quincey in his 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. His etched plates contained remarkable imagination and a practical understanding of ancient technology. Piranesi’s lifelong obsession with architecture, past and present, was fundamental to his genius.
40 Piranesi was able to focus in on his awareness of what was noble and magnificent and gain a sense for the sublime in the architectural tradition of Rome. Moreover, Piranesi’s interest in ruins was genuine antiquarian desire to preserve and record. Nevertheless, these views of Rome firmly established Piranesi’s reputation and gave him the initial financial stability that enabled him to tackle grander themes. These changes could possibly be a response to market demand and what Grand Tourists wanted to see in their vedute, or it could be a personal style change as Piranesi became intrigued by the idea of the sublime. They also specifically concentrate on a monument, like the “Veduta del Ponte Salario,” or ruin instead of portraying a sweeping view of Roman landscape. His later views featured heavier line, a sublime eye, and more dramatic perspectives. As represented in the “Veduta della Piazza della Rotonda,” Piranesi, clearly contorting perspective, etched an exaggerated and extended view of the Rotonda, unfocused on a specific aspect of the scene. The little figures present at the ground level are the everyday people and visitors in contemporary Rome. In his first views, the monument or subject was drawn from a distance so that it was clearly set in its context. The first thirty-four views were published in a single volume and entitled Le Magnificenze di Roma. His early sites include obvious popular sights, such as Piazza della Rotonda and the Sepolcro di Cecilia Metella. 39 The views were intended as tourist souvenirs and, from their instant popularity, Piranesi had obviously judged the market well. This influenced European thought to such an extent that Grand Tourists, who had come to know Rome through Piranesi’s prints, were recorded as being disappointed on their first encounter with the real thing. Piranesi’s Vedute, which overshadowed competitor’s views of Roman landmarks through compelling compositions, strong lighting contrasts, and dramatic presentation, shaped European conceptions of present day Rome.
#Giovanni battista piranesi series
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta del Ponte Salario (View of the Ponte Salario), plate 55 from the series "Vedute di Roma" (Views of Rome), 1754, etching (Davis Museum)īy 1747, Piranesi had begun work on the Vedute di Roma, and he continued to create plates for this series until he died in 1778.
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