Piranesi, Giovanni Battista

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista (1720–78). Venetian engineer, architect, and engraver of genius, he had a profound effect on Neo-Classicism with his Sublime images of Rome. He produced a series of Invenzioni (Inventions or Imaginary Views) featuring Carceri (Prisons) in 1749–50 that were powerful images of vast spaces and huge structures, the whole drawn to a terrifyingly megalomaniac scale. Then came the first of the Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome—1745) that revealed a Rome so overpoweringly Sublime that the plates became influential throughout Europe, but especially among the young architects of the French Academy in Rome. His speculative archaeology led him to design fantasies of considerable originality. Appearing in the Opere Varie (Various Works—1750), they had a great influence on architects like de Wailly and the Peyres. His antiquarian studies led to the Antichità Romane (collected in four volumes in 1756), which made his reputation: it was designed to illustrate constructional techniques and the Roman ornamental vocabulary. He took sides in the Graeco-Roman controversy, assuming leadership of the pro-Roman cause against the pro-Greek camp of Winckelmann. In 1761 he published Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de' Romani (On the Magnificence and Architecture of the Romans) designed to show the supremacy of Roman architecture, followed by Il Campo Marzio dell' Antica Roma (The Campus Martius of Ancient Rome—1762), dedicated to Robert Adam, containing a complex fantasy of urban buildings purporting to show Rome under Constantine, but far grander than anything created by Ancient Romans.

In c.1760 he reissued the Carceri plates, reworked, and with some new images, that struck chords among advanced Neo-Classicists, notably George Dance the Younger, Desprez, and others. The Parere su l'Architettura (Thoughts on Architecture—1765) argued for a free use of Roman exemplars for the creation of a new style. In 1763, Pope Clement XIII (1758–69) commissioned him to design a new Papal high-altar for the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. Piranesi developed his scheme to include the replacement of the whole structure to the liturgical east of the transept by a gigantic top-lit apsidal sanctuary, but it was never implemented. Around this time he remodelled the Church and Headquarters of the Knights of Malta, redesigning the façade of Santa Maria Aventina (1764–6—for which detailed account-books have survived), Rome, and creating a formal piazza one wall of which was embellished with a series of decorative stelai. The altar and lighting inside the church were elaborately contrived. This Aventine commission was Piranesi's only building, but it is one of the most powerful and original of C18.

His Diverse Maniere d'adornare i cammini (Different Ways of Decorating Chimney-Pieces—1769) was his most important publication for interior design and the applied arts. It was to be significant in the development of Adam's chim-ney-pieces and Etruscan style, and also provided Bélanger and other French architects with motifs. The book contained a series of chimney-pieces in the ‘Egyptian’ style that provided many ideas for the Egyptian Revival and indeed influenced aspects of the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s. The book also illustrated Piranesi's Egyptianizing painted interiors of the Caffè degl'Inglesi (English Café), Rome (c.1768). Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcophagi (Vases, Candelabras, Markers, and Sarcophagi) was brought out between 1778 and 1791 and had an enormous following among designers of the Empire and Regency periods. It publicized many of the artefacts he had been designing and making since at least the 1760s, as well as Piranesi's activities as a restorer of Antiquities. In spite of his antipathy towards all things Greek, he made superb drawings of the Greek Doric temple at Paestum, which were acquired by Soane. The engravings made from these, published in 1778 as Différentes Vues…de Pesto, had a tremendous impact on the Doric and Greek Revivals, and were brought out partly under the aegis of Piranesi's son, Francesco (1758–1810), who played an important part in completing his father's later works, notably the Vasi…Francesco Piranesi published a map of the Villa Adriana, Tivoli (1781), and added new plates to further editions of the Vedute, Antichità, and other works. Most importantly, he issued a massive collection of graphic works in 27 volumes (1800–7) as well as a three-volume set of Antiquités de la Grande Grèce (1804–7) based on his father's work at Pompeii.

Bibliography

J. Bloomer (1993);
Calvesi (ed.) (1967);
J. Curl (2005);
Focillon (1967);
FHL (1967);
Lütgens (1994);
Nyberg & Mitchell (eds.) (1975);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Reudenbach (1979);
Rykwert (1980);
I. Scott (1975);
Jane Turner (1996);
Wilton-Ely (ed.) (1972, 1978, 1978a, 1993, 1994);
Wilton-Ely or Wilton-Ely (ed.) & Connors (eds.) (1992);
Wittkower (1975)