Introduction

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) was a Venetian artist renowned for his works depicting ancient Rome’s architectural marvels. As the son of a stonemason and master builder, Piranesi was destined to capture the grandeur and inevitable decay of Rome, and indeed, no one was better suited for this endeavor. Though Piranesi was born in Mogliano near Mestre, a borough of the commune of Venice, it was in Venice where he spent the first twenty years of his life studying architecture and stage design. He considered himself an architect, consistently signing his work “architetto.” He initially apprenticed under his uncle, receiving practical training in structural and hydraulic engineering. This very background in architecture set Piranesi’s work apart.

Upon his move to Rome in 1740, Piranesi had intended to work as an architect; however, a lack of commissions propelled him towards another field that would define his artistic career. He became an apprentice of Giuseppe Vasi, the leading producer of the etchings and engravings of Rome until the 1760s. Piranesi produced his most famous works during the period of time between 1748 and his death in 1778; these pieces included his Vedute di Roma, or “Views of Rome,” a series of 135 plates depicting views of ancient and modern Rome.

He worked in both etching and engraving, and examples of both can be seen in this exhibition. Though both are printmaking techniques, engraving is a physical process while etching is a chemical process. Engraving involves cutting channels that allow ink to settle directly into a metal plate. Etchings, however, are made by coating a plate in a varnish that is then scraped away. Dipping the plate in an acid erodes the plate where the varnish was removed and creates the grooves for the ink. Both methods result in the creation of a metal plate that an artist would use to make multiple copies of the same image. Piranesi was able to create far more durable plates by avoiding techniques that make a plate prone to erosion, such as cross hatching. By working more with parallel lines, there were fewer edges in the plate that were exposed to corrosive materials. He also routinely reworked his plates, deepening the grooves to redefine the lines, which made his plates remarkably durable.

During Piranesi’s time, there was a thriving market for artistic prints depicting the scenery of Rome, supported by noble and aristocratic tourists visiting the Eternal City. “The Grand Tour,” as it was called, was a common feature of an aristocratic education in Europe from the seventeenth century until the widespread implementation of rail transport. For upper-class young men, visiting Rome to experience the sights of antiquity first-hand was seen as a rite of passage. Seeking mementos of their pilgrimage, many visitors purchased prints depicting the sights of the Grand Tour. The wealth brought by these visitors was a driving factor in the creation of these artistic renditions of Rome, including the works of Piranesi.

Both the medium he utilized and the tradition of The Grand Tour contributed to Piranesi’s success. His process allowed him to make numerous copies of the same work, selling the prints to finance his career. The tourism that funded his work also disseminated it. Piranesi’s works were widely circulated among the European aristocracy in the eighteenth century, coinciding with the height of the Enlightenment as well as the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum. His unique perspective on antiquity, particularly the monumental architecture of Rome, helped spark a desire to rediscover the classical world among European artists. From the late-eighteenth century onward, European art and architecture increasingly began to feature classical themes and motifs as Neoclassicism grew in Europe.

Commonly, a copperplate only produces some 250 impressions. Through nothing short of mastery for his craft, Piranesi was able to make up to 4000 impressions from a single plate. By reworking each plate and avoiding techniques which led to excessive erosion, he extended each plate’s life to produce a staggering number of impressions. Prints were still produced from his copperplates well into the nineteenth century, which in part explains the extensive proliferation of his work for even a century after his lifetime. It seems the only limit to how many copies of a work Piranesi made was the demand for a particular image, and in this regard too Piranesi proves why he is considered one of the most prolific printmakers of all time. In his career, he is believed to have produced approximately 1000 individual prints, a feat that dwarfs those of his predecessors. Albrecht Dürer, for example, is thought to have produced around 105, and Rembrandt in his career to have made approximately 300. Where Dürer and Rembrandt worked in a number of media, Piranesi’s dedication to printmaking helped him develop superior plates and expert craftsmanship. His aptitude for printmaking did not go unnoticed even early in his career. His mentor Vasi even remarked that he was more of a painter, in reference to the atmospheric and tonal aspects of his work.

Aware his audience was primarily aristocrats traveling to Italy to sightsee, Piranesi’s work is inexorably linked to tourism. This is especially noticeable in his depictions of ruins; he frequently places people either preoccupied or simply disinterested amongst the ruins, creating a sense, for his educated audience, of going where other learned people do not–an adventure in paper and ink. His composition, focusing on the most dramatic perspective, evokes a sense of  grandeur akin to viewing the sites in person. This perhaps is why an early biographer of his, Bianconi, referred to him as the “Rembrandt of Ancient Ruins.” The picturesque perspective highlights the sense of adventure and deliberately targets a tourist looking for a keepsake from their time in Italy. Every postcard and tourist photo that aims to capture the majesty of an architectural wonder or historied ruin attempts to emulate Piranesi, knowingly or not.

Beyond the incredible detail in his etchings and engravings, Piranesi captures the overgrowth and ruined state of these sites with an invariable sense of forlorn beauty. In each of these prints, he is able to breathe life into a forgotten place. Piranesi’s approach resonated deeply with the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, who, in his famous Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, describes the ruins of Rome as a reflection of the ancient civilization’s former glory and present decay. In particular, Piranesi’s use of the chiaroscuro technique conveyed a sense of splendor, utilizing strong contrasts between light and shadow elements to render each structure vast and imposing. This is what motivated the renowned German writer, poet, and thinker Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to claim that Piranesi’s depiction of ruins “could hardly satisfy” even an artistically-trained eye compared to Piranesi’s “rich imaginary impression.” Having seen the grandiosity encompassed in Piranesi’s work, the extant monuments did not compare.

Piranesi’s capricci, compositions that combine architecture with imaginary or exaggerated elements, encapsulate the monumental structures of Rome, its palaces, temples, and tombs. His subjects lay in decay within the early modern city and among the sublime Italian landscape. Many of the etchings and engravings in this exhibit depict iconic sites of antiquity in Rome, though Piranesi makes changes in his depictions. Some of his works, such as Internal View of the Atrium of the Portico of Octavia (cat. #6), portray a rather accurate image; yet, other etchings, like his depiction of the Tomb of the Plautii (cat. #7), border on complete fantasy. Piranesi does not portray the architecture of Rome as it stood in either his time or ours. Rather, he manifests with painstaking detail the Eternal City in an imaginary portrayal, a view that would be more familiar to a scholar who knows Rome only through history and myth. 

The exhibit also features Piranesi’s Carceri d’Invenzione, or “Imaginary Prisons” (cat. #19), a project in which the artist’s imaginative series of labyrinthine prisons evokes a sense of entrapment through its physically impossible architectural structures. This exploration of scale and space contrasts with his Roman architecture depictions by inviting disorientation at the suspension of the onlooker’s belief regarding real-world laws of physics. Together, these series reveal Piranesi’s penchant to depict a maddening sense of scale and an imagined view of reality that present both the ruins of an ancient empire and the depths of the human psyche as equally monumental.

Vacant and derelict is how Piranesi chose to portray architectural marvels of the ancient world like the Flavian Amphitheater, the famed Colosseum of Rome (cat.#11). In his other works – his Vestibule of an Ancient Temple (cat.#1), for example – he depicts vast and imposing edifices. Through his etchings and engravings, he brings to life fantastical and monumental reflections of Rome that surpass even the real-life counterparts of his subjects. Piranesi once remarked on his dramatization of Roman architecture: “I will tell you only that these speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings, even those of the immortal Palladio, could never have succeeded in conveying, though I always kept them before my eyes.” Never losing sight of the monuments that inspired his work, Piranesi, with great intent, sought to produce the images that the incomplete ruins evoked in his own mind with unparalleled expressivity and proficiency.

Within the context of D.C.’s varied culture and diverse construction styles, the classically-inspired architectural structures of the city serve as concrete manifestations of the vivid, dreamlike works on display in this exhibition. Towering over the National Mall, the Washington Monument may appear, not as a monument in the nation's capital, but a colossal form of Piranesi’s Egyptian Obelisk (cat. #5) come to life. Resting on the bank of the Potomac Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial is a reflection of Roman architecture through its dome and other influences taken from the Pantheon (cat. #12). Beyond architecture, these memorials are testaments to Rome as not just a physical location, but as an Eternal City in the public psyche.

Piranesi’s work forces us to ask what responsibility the artist has to depict reality. The urge to draw comparisons to fantastic visions of the past also exists in modern D.C. Those who draw such comparisons, however, should be careful to consider that no matter how high we imagine Rome’s walls, it is their fall that we remember most. What makes Piranesi such an exceptional artist is that he understood that the grandeur of ancient Rome lies in what remains of its ruins. The Eternal City’s permanence lies in its impermanence – a reminder that great civilizations rise and fall and leave behind for us a vision of what once was and may never have been.

Nikolas Diakolios

 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey in Goethe’s Collected Works Volume 6. trans. Robert H. Heitner. Suhrkamp Publishers: New York, 1989. 363.