Frontispiece of Volume 1 of Urbis Aeternae Vestigia, from Le Antichità Romane
Artist/Maker
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
(Italian, 1720–1778)
Date1784
MediumEngraving
DimensionsImage: 2 5/8 × 26 15/16 in. (6.6 × 68.4 cm)
Sheet: 21 1/16 × 29 1/2 in. (53.5 × 75 cm)
Sheet: 21 1/16 × 29 1/2 in. (53.5 × 75 cm)
Credit LineEllen H. Johnson Bequest
EditionSecond edition
PortfolioLe Antichità Romane (Roman Antiquities)
Object number1998.7.120
Status
Not on viewIn the artistic production of the architect, printmaker, and art theorist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, ruins invite experimentation, novel thinking, and flights of imagination. His representations of ancient Roman monuments are not associated with decline or decay. Rather, Piranesi produced a prolific body of engraved images that took Roman ruins as a point of departure in a monumental artistic vision of classicizing, yet fundamentally new, creations. For Piranesi, ruins constitute an imaginative seed, the generative material of a new vision of Rome.
The dense configuration of overgrown ruins in the foreground—fragments of ancient monuments representing trophies, a Roman map, portions of the architectural orders, a grand bridge, and a triumphal arch—suggests the vitality of Piranesi’s imagination. His four-volume set, Le antichità romane, which contained 250 plates, was an imaginative tour-de-force.
Exhibition History
The dense configuration of overgrown ruins in the foreground—fragments of ancient monuments representing trophies, a Roman map, portions of the architectural orders, a grand bridge, and a triumphal arch—suggests the vitality of Piranesi’s imagination. His four-volume set, Le antichità romane, which contained 250 plates, was an imaginative tour-de-force.
Surveying the Ruin: The Architectural Landscape on Paper
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (March 1, 2005 - August 21, 2005 )
Imaging Rome Through Artists' Eyes, 1600-1800
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 3, 2009 - June 14, 2009 )
Italy on Paper
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 7, 2012 - July 29, 2012 )
A Picture of Health: Art and the Mechanisms of Healing
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (February 2, 2016 - May 29, 2016 )
Collections
- European
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early 17th century