Photograph by Ed Pollard, Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital slr-2010.

The Antiquities of Rome (Le Antichità Romane)

Artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720-1778)

Date1784

MediumPaper

Dimensions20 5/8 x 15 3/4 in. (52.4 x 40 cm)

ClassificationsEuropean art

Credit LineGift of the Mowbray Arch Society, 2010

Object number2010.9

On View

Not on view

DescriptionFour volumes, folio (20 ? x 15 ¾ inches) published in Rome by Stamperia Salomoni, second edition, 1784. Letterpress title to vol.I. One etched portrait frontispiece of Piranesi by Francisco Piranesi; three etched titles; two engraved index leaves; one double-page etched dedication to Gustavius III of Sweden; 247 etched plates on 214 leaves (two double-page by Francisco Piranesi, 245 by G.B. Piranesi [10 folding, 118 doublepage; 6 single-page plates printed on three double-page leaves; 53 single-page plates, 60 half-page plates printed on thirty single-page leaves]), 1 etched headpiece, 1 etched illustration, 6 etched initials. Contemporary diced russia, covers with triple fillet borders, expertly rebacked to style using eighteenth-century russia, spines in seven compartments with double raised bands, the bands highlighted by gilt fillets and roll tools, lettered in gilt in the second and third compartments, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, the four volumes in two modern half-morocco boxes with title labels on upper covers.

Label TextGiovanni Battista Piranesi Italian (1720-1778) Le Antichità Romane [The Antiquities of Rome], 1784 Four volume set of etchings Gift of the Mowbray Arch Society, 2010 2010.9.1-.4 Published in Rome in 1784, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's The Antiquities of Rome was one of the most influential works of art produced in the realm of printmaking during the eighteenth century. It contains 247 original etchings by the great Italian printmaker, nearly half of them grand double-page images as those displayed here. Piranesi's brilliantly composed etchings captured not only the dramatic sweep and grandeur of Rome's ancient architectural remains-its antique temples, tombs, amphitheaters, and bridges-but revealed with unprecedented accuracy the complex structural underpinnings of those same great monuments. It is both an artistic and archeological masterpiece. The Antiquities of Rome exerted a formative influence on European Neoclassicism, a style devoted to the modern rediscovery of the art and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome. It also presented a powerfully moralizing message about the fleeting nature of all things made by man.