Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Self-Portrait by Piranesi courtesy of Wikipedia

The artwork of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, known for his innovative engraving techniques in the Italian Neoclassical style, is displayed at some of the most prestigious art museums in the world.  His love of architecture emanated from his etchings, beginning with the fantastical and evolving into extraordinarily detailed depictions of the structures he chose to replicate.  In fact, he fancied himself an architect above all else.

Neither through deliberate intention nor by chance, Piranesi was an artist in every sense of the word.  Trained in a wide variety of trades, which included stage design, structural engineering and perspective composition he compensated for his lack of architectural commissions by channeling his skills toward more artistic endeavors.  In the early 1740’s, his mentor Giuseppe Vasi, was influential in the areas of etching and engraving that would guide Piranesi’s remarkable career and accomplishments.

Commencing with his initial contribution, Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive in 1743, a vedute or etching of panoramic views, Piranesi beguiled the Venetian people and visiting tourists with his flavorful perspective of rich Roman architecture.  Upon his return to Rome in 1748, he worked in his studio to create his well received vedute of the Italian city and earned esteemed acclaim as an antiquarian.  Antichità Romane de' tempo della prima Repubblica e dei primi imperatori translated as “Roman Antiquities of the Time of the First Republic and the First Emperors”, was a result of his profound effort to bring his beloved Roman structures to life.

Despite Piranesi’s desire to make a name for himself as an architect, only one structure was assembled in accordance with his design, the disappointingly ordinary Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome.  The church became his final resting place upon his death in 1778.  His vision was ultimately realized through the work of others who drew their influences directly from Piranesi’s detailed etchings and engravings.  Stage designers, writers and painters of fancy of the era – and beyond - adapted his imaginative viewpoint to suit their particular profession all the while contributing to the significant change in the architectural reverie of Roman construct.

Drawing of Capitals taken from Hildegund Mueller

Drawing of the Exterior of the Parthenon courtesy of University of Washington

Perhaps the most influential of all his work, The Prisons of Imagination or Carceri d'invenzione raised the level of etching to an artform.  A vedute consisting of a series of sixteen prints revealing a complicated labryinth of stairways, ghoulish mechanizations of torture, shadowed perspective and haunting scene-scapes, Piranesi captured the darker side of the cities architecture.  It was reported that he rendered these etchings during a delirius spell induced by fever.  Eery fascination with Piranesi’s work on the Carceri d’invenzione continues into the twentieth century.

Carceri Plate VI - The Smoking Fire courtesy of Wikipedia

As a precursor to the days of social thinking Romanticism and political Surrealists, Piranesi flaunted his controversial ideology that Roman architecture was superior to that of the Greek.  He painstakingly measured and recreated the whole of the Roman aqueduct system and other edifices, which were published in several volumes, including Avanzi degli Edifici di Pesto and Campo Marzio dell'antica Roma.  Unfinished recreations were fulfilled through the efforts of his children and students.

The Arch of Trajan at Benevento as it appeared in the 18th century courtesy of Wikipedia

The mark of a true artisan is one that stimulates creativity and leaves a lasting affect on future generations.  Piranesi left a long line of enthusiasts in his wake, who adopted similar techniques or applied his particular style to their own work.  His desire to preserve the ancient ruins that he loved through the engraving process he helped engineer is a credit to his perseverance in an artistic format.  He paved the way for fantasy to shape itself within the realm of reality and his adoration for antiquities was both entreprenurial and avant garde.