the archaeological sublime: history and architecture in piranesi's ...

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SUBLIME: HISTORY 

AND ARCHITECTURE IN PIRANESI’S 

DRAWINGS 

A Thesis Submitted to 

the Graduate School of Engineering and Sciences of 

zmir Institute of Technology 

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of 

MASTER OF SCIENCE 

in Architecture 

by 

Fatma pek EK 

June 2006 

ZM R

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Initially I offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Deniz 

engel who has supported me throughout my thesis process with her valuable 

knowledge and expert guidance. I would also like to thank my supervisor, again, for her 

translations of the primary and secondary sources originally written in Italian, French, 

German, Portuguese and Latin. I thank the members of the thesis defense committee, 

Prof. Dr. Gürhan Tümer and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat Günaydın for inspiring discussion 

and comments. 

I especially wish to thank Mrs Svetlana Pashaeva, M.A., for her useful lectures 

in art history and helpful support in providing sources for this thesis. 

This study has been financially supported by a grant from the Institute’s 

Research Fund (Project No. 2005 YTE 11), which enabled ordering of archival and old 

materials. I am also thankful to the head and staff of the Administrative and Financial 

Department, especially to Mrs Nazife ahin and Mr Mestan Ceyhan, for help with the 

bureaucratic problems and process of providing financial contact with the international 

libraries to order the academic materials. 

I would also like to thank Mr Robert Viau, Professor of English & 

Interdisciplinary Studies in Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville; and 

Davidson Galleries, Seattle, Washington for permission to reproduce photographs, 

prints and paintings in their possession. 

I am pleased to thank to the head of Institute Libraries, Mr Gültekin Gürdal, 

MBA, for his invaluable help for rendering microfilms readable and to the Islamic 

Research Center ( SAM) for technological assistance. 

Finally it is a pleasure to thank to my family and friends for their help, all the 

emotional support and encouragement they provided, and for their great patience and 

love.

ABSTRACT 

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SUBLIME: HISTORY AND 

ARCHITECTURE IN PIRANESI’S DRAWINGS 

In the architectural, historical, and archaeological context of the eighteenth 

century, Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) played an important 

role. He posited crucial theses in the debates on the ‘origins of architecture’ and 

‘aesthetics’. He is numbered foremost among the founders of modern archaeology. But 

Piranesi was misinterpreted both in his day and posthumously. The vectors of approach 

yielding misinterpretation of Piranesi derived from two phenomena: one is the early 

nineteenth-century Romanticist reception of Piranesi’s character and work. The second 

is the mode of codification of architectural history. The former interpretation derived 

from Piranesi’s position on aesthetics, the latter from his argument concerning origins. 

Both of these served the identification of Piranesi as ‘unclassifiable’. He has thus been 

excluded from the ‘story’ of the progress of western architectural history. 

Piranesi, however, conceived of these two debates as one interrelated topic. 

Concerning origins, he developed a history of architecture not based on the East/West 

division, and supported this by the argument that Roman architecture depended on 

Etruscans which was rooted in Egypt. Secondly, he distinguished Roman from Grecian 

architecture identified with ‘ingenious beauty’. Thus Piranesi placed Romans in another 

aesthetical category which the eighteenth century called ‘the sublime’. Piranesi’s 

perception caused him to be described as madman or idiosyncratic. However, most of 

these evaluations lack a stable historical base. Therefore, restoring Piranesi, his 

arguments, executed works and drawings to architectural history appear as a necessity. 

iv

ÖZET 

A KIN ARKEOLOJ : P RANES ’N N DESENLER NDE TAR H VE 

M MARLIK 

On sekizinci yüzyılın mimarî, tarihsel ve arkeolojik ba lamlarında önemli rol 

oynayan talyan mimar Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), ‘mimarlı ın kökeni’ ve 

‘estetik’ tartı malar üzerine etkili tezler ileri sürmü tür. Aynı zamanda modern arkeoloji 

biliminin kurucuları arasında yer almaktadır. Bununla birlikte, Piranesi hem kendi 

gününde hem de ölümünden sonra yanlı yorumlanmı tır. Piranesi’nin yanlı 

yorumlanmasına yol açan yakla ım iki olguya ba lıdır: birincisi Piranesi’nin eserlerinin 

do rudan psikolojik karakterini yansıttı ına dair olan, erken on dokuzuncu yüzyılın 

Romantisist algısıdır. kincisi ise mimarlık tarihi kodifikasyonundan türeyen yorumdur. 

lk tür yorumlar Piranesi’nin estetik tartı malardaki konumuna dayanırken, ikinci tür 

yorumlar, mimarlı ın kökenine dair öne sürdü ü tezlere ele tiri olarak ortaya çıkmı tır. 

Her iki tür yorum tarzı da Piranesi’yi ‘sınıflandırılamaz’ kategorisine yerle tirmektedir. 

Böylece Piranesi, batı mimarlık tarihinin geli im ‘öykü’sünden dı lanmı tır. 

Piranesi, iki tartı mayı birbiriyle ili kili tek bir konu eklinde ele almaktaydı. 

Köken tartı malarında Do u/Batı ayrımına dayanmayan bir mimarlık tarihi anlayı ı 

geli tiren Piranesi, söz konusu tezini Roma mimarlı ının kökeni Etrüsk’e, Etrüsk’ün 

kökleri ise Mısır’a dayanmaktadır savıyla desteklemi ti. Piranesi bu savıyla aynı 

zamanda estetik tartı maya da katılmı oluyordu. Çünkü Roma mimarlı ının kökenini 

farklı bir medeniyete dayandırarak, kendi öz mimarlı ını ‘hünerli güzellik’ sözleriyle 

tanımlanan Yunan mimarlı ından ayrı ele alıyor, böylece Roma mimarlı ını estetik etki 

ba lamında ba ka bir yere, ‘yüce’ konumuna yerle tiriyordu. Ancak Piranesi’nin 

mantıklı görünen iddiası onun çılgın ya da tuhaf olarak tanımlanmasına yol açmı tır. 

Nitekim ithamların ço u sa lam tarihsel temellere dayanmayan önyargılardan ibarettir. 

Bu nedenle, Piranesi’yi, tezlerini, uygulanmı eserlerini ve çizimlerini mimarlık tarihi 

sürecinde yeniden konumlandırmak bir gereklilik olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. 

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... viii 

LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................ xiv 

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.........................................................................................xv 

LIST OF TITLES OF PIRANESI’S PRINTED WORKS FREQUENTLY USED 

IN THIS THESIS, AND THEIR TRANSLATIONS .................................................. xvii 

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................1 

CHAPTER 2. WHY IS PIRANESI MISINTERPRETED: LE STYLE C’EST 

L’HOMME MEME ................................................................................8 

2.1. Identifying Man and Work...................................................................8 

2.2. Piranesi Fashioned as Romantic “Opium Eater”................................15 

CHAPTER 3. ARCHITECTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF PIRANESI...........................24 

CHAPTER 4. WHY IS PIRANESI MISINTERPRETED: FLETCHER’S TREE 

OF ARCHITECTURE..........................................................................74 

4.1. ‘Excessive’ and ‘Eclectic’ or Architectural History of 

Archaeology? .....................................................................................74 

4.2. “The Tree of Architecture” .................................................................82 

CHAPTER 5. ASIA, EUROPE, AFRICA AND HISTORY OF STYLES IN 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY........................................................88 

5.1. The Eighteenth-Century Debate on Origins and Its Background .......88 

5.2. Perception of ‘Orient’ in Piranesi .....................................................100 

5.3. Piranesi and Scientific Method.........................................................107 

vi

CHAPTER 6. PIRANESI BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND SUBLIME ..................117 

6.1. Against a vil metier ...............................................................117 

6.2. A Different Classic ...........................................................................120 

6.3. A “Disposition” for the Sublime.......................................................122 

6.4. Sublime Characteristics ....................................................................136 

6.5. Beautiful Greece and Modern Sublime ............................................139 

CHAPTER 7. EPILOGUE........................................................................................142 

BIBLIOGRAPHY.........................................................................................................144 

vii

LIST OF FIGURES 

Unless otherwise indicated, the material below is by Piranesi. 

Figure Page 

Figure 2.1. Felice Polanzani, portrait of Piranesi, Opere varie, 1750.......................... 11 

Figure 2.2. Joseph Nolleken, portrait bust of Piranesi, late 1760s, Accademia 

Nazionale di San Luca, Rome.................................................................... 12 

Figure 2.3. Michael Rysbrack and Peter Scheemakers, busts of British 

Worthies, Stowe Gardens, 1729, photography Robert Viau, 2005............ 13 

Figure 2.4. Plate VII, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760....................................................... 16 

Figure 2.5. Plate IX, Parere, 1765 22 

Figure 2.6. Plate IX, detail, Parere, 1765 .................................................................... 22 

Figure 3.1. Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Copper 23, scene design viewed at an 

angle, Architettura civile preparata su la Geometri, 1711........................ 27 

Figure 3.2. Gruppo di Scale, Prima Parte, 1743 ......................................................... 28 

Figure 3.3. Giovanni Paolo Pannini, View of the Roman Forum, 1735, Detroit 

Institute of Arts .......................................................................................... 29 

Figure 3.4. Mausoleo antico, Prima Parte, 1743......................................................... 31 

Figure 3.5. Elevation of Palatine, Del Palazzo de’Cesari Verona, 1738 .................... 32 

Figure 3.6. Carcere oscura, Prima Parte, 1743........................................................... 33 

Figure 3.7. Galleria grande di Statue, Prima Parte, 1743........................................... 33 

Figure 3.8. Campidoglio antico, Prima Parte, 1743.................................................... 34 

Figure 3.9. Ponte magnifico, Prima Parte, 1743 ......................................................... 34 

Figure 3.10. Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Copper 24, designing scenes by using 

the method of Venetian painters, Architettura civile, 1711....................... 35 

Figure 3.11. Plate VI, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760 ........................................................ 36 

Figure 3.12. Baldassare Orsini, Plate XIII, Le scene, 1785 ........................................... 37 

Figure 3.13. Baldassare Orsini, Plate XI, Le scene, 1785 .............................................. 37 

Figure 3.14. Baldassare Orsini, Plate X, Le scene, 1785 ............................................... 38 

Figure 3.15. Baldassare Orsini, Plate LXVII, Geometria, 1773 .................................... 38 

Figure 3.16. Jean Barbault, L’Arco di Costantino Monumenti di Roma antica 

originale, Les plus beaux Monumens de Rome ancienne, 1761 ................ 39 

viii

Figure 3.17. Veduta dell’ Arco di Costantino, Vedute, 1748 ......................................... 40 

Figure 3.18. A sketch by Piranesi after Juvarra’s design for Amadei’s opera 

Teodosio il Giovane of 1711, British Museum, London, 1908-6- 

16-46 .......................................................................................................... 41 

Figure 3.19. Filippo Juvarra, Scena per angolo, Museo Civico, Turin.......................... 41 

Figure 3.20. Antonio Galli-Bibiena, scénographie, Chicago, Phyllis B. Lambert 

Collection................................................................................................... 41 

Figure 3.21. Pianta di ampio magnifico collegio, Opere varie, 1750............................ 42 

Figure 3.22. Marie-Joseph Peyre, engraved plan of project for an Academy, 

detail, “Plan d’un bâtiment qui contiendrait les académies,” 

Oeuvres d’architecture, 1765, British Architectural Library, RIBA, 

London ....................................................................................................... 42 

Figure 3.23. Detail of medallion depicting Piranesi and Robert Adam, Campo, 

1762 ........................................................................................................... 44 

Figure 3.24. Catalogo delle Opere Date Finora alla Luce da Gio. Battista 

Piranesi, 1762............................................................................................ 46 

Figure 3.25. Prospetto esterno dell avanzo de’ portici circulari del Teatro de 

Marcello, Antichità, IV, 1756.................................................................... 47 

Figure 3.26. Pierre-Jean Mariette, measured drawing from the L’Architecture 

françoise, 1727........................................................................................... 47 

Figure 3.27. Giambattista Nolli, detail from the La nuova topografia di Roma 

Comasco, 1748........................................................................................... 49 

Figure 3.28. Severan Forma Urbis Romae, a fragment demonstrating part of the 

Subura, a notorious neighbourhood of imperial Rome..................... 49 

Figure 3.29. Plan of Rome, Antichità, I, 1756 ............................................................... 49 

Figure 3.30. Plan of Rome, Campo, 1762...................................................................... 50 

Figure 3.31. Foundations of Hadrian’s Mausoleum (later Castel Sant’Angelo), 

Antichità, IV, 1756..................................................................................... 51 

Figure 3.32. Part of the foundations of the theatre of Marcellus, Antichità, IV, 

1756 ........................................................................................................... 51 

Figure 3.33. Ichnographiam Campi Martii Antiquae Urbis, Campo, 1762................... 52 

Figure 3.34. Plate VII (Lapide del primo frontespizio) on the left, and facing 

page on the right, Lettere di giustificazione scritte a milord 

Charlemont, first edition, 1757.................................................................. 53 

ix

Figure 3.35. View and sectional detail of the Cloaca Maxima, Della 

magnificenza, 1761 .................................................................................... 56 

Figure 3.36. Roman and Greek Ionic capitals, Le Roy’s words and The Mouth of 

Truth, Della magnificenza, 1761 ............................................................... 56 

Figure 3.37. Title page (inserted frame depicts Mariette’s hand), Osservazioni, 

1765 ........................................................................................................... 58 

Figure 3.38. Dimostrazionidell’ Emissario del Lago Albano, Emissario, 1762 ............ 60 

Figure 3.39. Veduta laterale dello stesso Sepolcro, Antichità d’Albano, 1764 ............. 60 

Figure 3.40. Prospettiva della scala della stessa conserva d’acqua, Antichità 

d’Albano, 1764........................................................................................... 61 

Figure 3.41. Ordine Toscano del Tampio di Giove Laziale, Antichità d’Albano, 

1764 ........................................................................................................... 61 

Figure 3.42. Disegno degli avanzi d’un’antica piscina e delle conserve dell’acqua della 

medesima, piantate su le rovine d’Alba Lunga, or sopra Castel Gandolfo di 

là dal Convento de’ PP. Riformati di San Francesco, Antichità d’Albano, 

1764 ........................................................................................................... 62 

Figure 3.43. Dimostrazione in grande del criptoportico accennato nella tav. 9 

con la lettera C, Spelonche, 1764.............................................................. 62 

Figure 3.44. Preliminary study for a longitudinal section from the apse of San 

Giovanni in Laterano, Plate III, 1765, The Pierpont Morgan 

Library, New York, 1966.11:56................................................................. 63 

Figure 3.45. Sketch study for the altar of The Apotheosis of St Basil of 

Cappadocia in Santa Maria del Priorato, Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, 

Hdz 6331.................................................................................................... 64 

Figure 3.46. Fides (faith, the goddess of loyalty), Berlin, Kunstbibliothek................... 65 

Figure 3.47. Religion, Berlin, Kunstbibliothek .............................................................. 66 

Figure 3.48. Fides (faith, the goddess of loyalty), Berlin, Kunstbibliothek................... 66 

Figure 3.49. Preliminary design for the screen wall of Santa Maria del 

Priorato’s piazza (framed part refers to the chimneypiece from the 

Diverse maniere), Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, Hdz 6303 .............................. 66 

Figure 3.50. Plate 34, Diverse maniere, 1769................................................................ 67 

Figure 3.51. View from the entrance façade of the Santa Maria del Priorato, 

Rome, 1764-66, photography Roberto Bossaglia...................................... 68 

x

Figure 3.52. Carlo Marchionni, Tempietto Greco, Villa Albani, Rome, 1760, 

photography Alinari/Art Resource, NY..................................................... 69 

Figure 3.53. Painted scheme in the Egyptian taste for the Caffé degli Inglesi, 

Rome (shorter wall), Diverse maniere, 1769 (executed in 1760).............. 70 

Figure 3.54. Painted scheme in the Egyptian taste for the Caffé degli Inglesi, 

Rome (longer wall), Diverse maniere, 1769 (executed in 1760)............... 71 

Figure 3.55. Funerary monument of Augustus Urbanus with boar’s head rhyton, 

Vasi, 1778 .................................................................................................. 72 

Figure 3.56. Drawing for Newdigate candelabrum, Vasi, 1778..................................... 72 

Figure 3.57. The Warwick Vase, Vasi, 1778 ................................................................. 73 

Figure 4.1. Chimneypiece in Egyptian manner, Plate XXIV, Diverse maniere, 

1769 ........................................................................................................... 75 

Figure 4.2. Plate XIV, Invenzioni capricci di carceri, 1745........................................ 75 

Figure 4.3. Pianta della forma del Castro di Tiberio, ecc., Antichità, I, 175676 

Figure 4.4. Fischer von Erlach, plate showing tombs at Heliopolis, Entwurf 

einer historischen Architektur, 1721 ......................................................... 79 

Figure 4.5. Sheet of sketches after Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurf einer 

historischen Architektur, The Pierpont Morgan Library, 

1966.11:17 ................................................................................................. 80 

Figure 4.6. Sir Banister Fletcher, “The Tree of Architecture,” A History of 

Architecture, 1896 ..................................................................................... 85 

Figure 4.7. Parte di ampio magnifico porto, Opere varie, 1750.................................. 87 

Figure 5.1. Marc-Antoine Laugier, Rustic Hut, Essai sur l’Architecture, 1753.......... 89 

Figure 5.2. Detail of the Acqua Felice, Vedute, 1760 .................................................. 92 

Figure 5.3. Chimneypiece in Etruscan manner, Diverse maniere, 1769...................... 97 

Figure 5.4. Francesco Milizia, drawing from the Del Teatro, 1773 ............................ 98 

Figure 5.5. One of flanking stelae on the south wall, Santa Maria del Priorato, 

1764-1766, Piazzale de’ Cavalieri di Malta, photography Gabinetto 

Fotografico Nazionale, Rome.................................................................... 99 

Figure 5.6. Cosmography around 124 AD, Dionysius Periegetes ............................. 100 

Figure 5.7. Asia - Africa distinction according to Herodotus, 450 BC, 

Herodotus................................................................................................. 103 

Figure 5.8. Isidore, T-O map, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, 

Vollbehr Collection, Washington, ljs184 ................................................ 104 

xi

Figure 5.9. Isidore’s T-O map translated into English with north at the top, 

Isidore ...................................................................................................... 104 

Figure 5.10. Hereford mappa mundi (Hereford world map), 1290, Library of 

Hereford Cathedral .................................................................................. 105 

Figure 5.11. Dionysii orbis descriptio, cover pages, 1697........................................... 106 

Figure 5.12. Pyramid of Cestius, Varie Vedute, 1750.................................................. 107 

Figure 5.13. Plate IX, Invenzioni capricci di carceri, 1745......................................... 109 

Figure 5.14. Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764 ............................... 110 

Figure 5.15. David Roberts, Fragments of the Great Colossi at the Memnonium, 

1847, Davidson Galleries, Seattle............................................................ 111 

Figure 5.16. Plate VI, Parere, 1765 ............................................................................. 112 

Figure 5.17. Chimneypiece in Egyptian manner, Diverse maniere, 1769 ................... 113 

Figure 5.18. Pianta del Serraglio delle fiere fabbricato da Dominiziano per uso 

dell’Anfiteatro, showing substructure which was buried in 

Piranesi’s time, Antichità, IV, 1756......................................................... 114 

Figure 5.19. Modo col quale furono alzati i grossi Travertini, e gli altri Marmi 

nel fabbricare il gran Sepolcro di Cecilia Metella, oggi detto Capo 

di Bove, Plate LIII, first edition, Antichità, III, 1756............................... 114 

Figure 5.20. Visual dictionary, Diverse maniere, 1769 ............................................... 115 

Figure 6.1. Plate VIII, detail, Parere, 1765................................................................ 118 

Figure 6.2. Plate VIII, Parere, 1765 .......................................................................... 118 

Figure 6.3. William Kent, Temple of British Worthies, Stowe Gardens, 

Buckinghamshire, photography Robert Viau, 2005 ................................ 124 

Figure 6.4. Giuseppe Vasi, Ponte Salario, Magnificenze di Roma Antica e 

Moderna, 1754......................................................................................... 125 

Figure 6.5. Ponte Salario, Vedute, 1754 .................................................................... 125 

Figure 6.6. Marc-Antoine Laugier, Rustic Hut, detail, Essai sur l’Architecture, 

1753 ......................................................................................................... 126 

Figure 6.7. Perspective construction of Vasi’s Ponte Salario.................................... 127 

Figure 6.8. Perspective construction of Piranesi’s Ponte Salario.............................. 128 

Figure 6.9. Human figures in Piranesi’s Ponte Salario.............................................. 130 

Figure 6.10. Human figures in Piranesi’s Plate VII, The Drawbridge, Carceri 

d’Invenzione, 1760................................................................................... 130 

xii

Figure 6.11. François Philotée Duflos, Basilica of Maxentius, Varie Vedute, 

1748 ......................................................................................................... 132 

Figure 6.12. Etienne Dupérac, Basilica of Maxentius, I Vestigi dell’Antichità 

di Roma, 1575.......................................................................................... 132 

Figure 6.13. Basilica of Maxentius, Antichità, 1756.................................................... 132 

Figure 6.14. Perspective construction of Duflos’ Basilica of Maxentius..................... 133 

Figure 6.15. Perspective construction of Piranesi’s Basilica of Maxentius................. 134 

Figure 6.16. Avonzo del Tempio della Concordia, Antichità, I, 1756.......................... 135 

Figure 6.17. Title page, Invenzioni capricci di carceri, 1745...................................... 136 

Figure 6.18. Plate II, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760........................................................ 136 

Figure 6.19. Frontispiece II, oblique perspective from Ichnographia, detail, 

Campo, 1762............................................................................................ 137 

xiii

LIST OF TABLES 

Table Page 

Table 2.1. Abrams’ construction demonstrating the co-ordinates of art 

criticism.........................................................................................................14 

xiv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 

Antichità Piranesi Le antichità romane 

Antichità d’Albano Piranesi Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo Descritte 

ed incise da Giovambattista Piranesi 

Architettura civile Bibiena Architettura civile preparata su la Geometri 

Belle arti Piranesi Della introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti 

in Europa ne’ tempi antichi 

Campo Piranesi Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma 

Carceri Piranesi Invenzioni capricci di carceri and Carceri 

d’invenzione 

Collegio Piranesi Pianta di ampio magnifico collegio 

Concordia Piranesi Avonzo del Tempio della Concordia 

De arch. Vitruvius De architectura libri decem 

Della magnificenza Piranesi Della magnificenza ed architettura de’romani 

Diverse maniere Piranesi Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni 

altra parte degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura 

egizia, etrusca, e greca, con un ragionamento 

apologetico in difesa dell'architettura egizia, e 

Toscana 

Emissario Piranesi Descrizione e disegno dell’emissario del Lago 

Albano di Gio. Battista Piranesi 

Essai Laugier Essai sur l’Architecture 

Apologetical Essay Piranesi, “An Apologetical Essay in Defense of the 

Egyptian and Tuscan Architecture” 

Gedanken Winckelmann Gedanken über die Nachahmung der 

griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und 

Bildhauer-Kunst 

Geometria Orsini Della geometria e prospettiva pratica 

Ichnographia Piranesi Ichnographiam Campi Martii Antiquae Urbis 

Inquiry Burke A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our 

Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 

Laterano Piranesi San Giovanni in Laterano 

xv

Le scene Orsini Le scene del nuovo Teatro del Verzaro di Perugia 

Lettere Piranesi Lettere di giustificazione scritte a Milord 

Charlemont e al di lui Agenti di Roma 

Observations Kant Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and 

Sublime 

On sub. Longinus Peri hypsous 

Opere varie Piranesi Opere varie di architettura 

Osservazioni Piranesi Osservazioni sopra la lettre de Monsieur Mariette 

Paestum Piranesi Varie Vedute di Paestum 

Parere Piranesi Parere su l’Architettura 

Pianta del Serraglio Piranesi Pianta del Serraglio delle fiere fabbricato da 

Poet. Aristotle Ars poetica 

Dominiziano per uso dell’Anfiteatro 

Porto Piranesi Parte di ampio magnifico porto 

Prima Parte Piranesi Prima Parte di Architetture e Prospettive 

Priorato Piranesi Santa Maria del Priorato 

Rhet. Aristotle Ars rhetorica 

Ruines Le Roy Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce 

Spelonche Piranesi Di due Spelonche Ornate Dagli Antichi alla Riva 

del Lago Albano 

Varie Vedute Piranesi Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna 

Vasi Piranesi Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, 

Vedute Piranesi Vedute di Roma 

Lucerne ed Ornamenti Antichi Disegn 

xvi

LIST OF TITLES OF PIRANESI’S PRINTED WORKS 

FREQUENTLY USED IN THIS THESIS, AND THEIR 

TRANSLATIONS 

Below is a chronological list of Piranesi’s works, including drawings (drawing 

series), texts, architectural projects, and executed projects. Certainly, Piranesi’s work 

presents difficulties in even this simple mode of classification, since a given work may 

easily be taken as, say, a drawing series as well as architectural project. In such cases, 

the alternatives were simultaneously indicated through the ‘alternative’ sign (/). 

1. 1743 Prima Parte di Architetture e Prospettive inventate ed incise da Gio. 

Batta. Piranesi Architetto Veneziano dedicate al Sig. Nicola Giobbe 

Part one of architecture and perspectives invented and etched by 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Venetian Architect, dedicated to Sig. Nicola 

Giobbe 

drawing series 

2. 1745 Grotteschi drawings 

3. 1745 Invenzioni capricci di carceri all’acqua forte datte il luce da Giovanni 

Buzard in Roma mercante al Corso 

Capricious inventions of prisons 


4. 1745 Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna incise da Celebri Autori a 

Spese di Fausto Amidei 

Diverse Views of Ancient and Modern Rome etched by Celebrated 

Artists at the Expense of Fausto Amidei 


5. 1748 Alcune Vedute di Archi Trionfali ed altri monumenti inalzati da Romani 

parte de quali se veggono in Roma e parte per l’Italia, ed Incisi dal 

Cavalier Gio. Battista Piranesi 

Some Views of Triumphal Archs and other monuments 


xvii

6. 1748 Antichità romane de’ tempi della repubblica e de’ primi imperatori, 

disegnate ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi 

Roman Antiquities of the time of the republic and the beginnings of the 

empire, designed and etched by Giambattista Piranesi 


6. 1748-78 Vedute di Roma 

Views of Rome 


7. 1750 Opere varie di architettura prospettive, grotteschi, antichità; inventate, 

ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi Architetto Veneziano 

Miscellaneous works in architectural perspectives, grotesques, 

antiquities; invented and etched by Giambattista Piranesi, Venetian 

Architect 


8. 1752 Raccolta di Varie Vedute di Roma si Anticha che Moderna Intagliate la 

Maggior Parte dal Celebre 

Collection of Various Views of Rome Antique and Modern Carved for 

the Most Part by Celebrities 


9. 1753 Trofei di Ottaviano Augusto Innalzati per la Vittoria ad Actium e 

Conquista dell’Egitto on vari altri ornamenti diligentemente ricavati 

dagli avanzi piu’ preziosi delle fabbriche antiche di Roma, utili a pittori, 

scultori ed architetti, designati ed incisi da Giambattista Piranesi, 

Architetto Veneziano 

Trophies of Octavian Augustus 


10. 1756 Le antichità romane 

Roman antiquities 

text and drawing series 

11. 1757 Lettere di giustificazione scritte a Milord Charlemont e al di lui Agenti di 

Roma dal Signor Piranesi socio della real societa’ degli antiquari di 

xviii

Londra intorno alla dedica della sua opera delle Antichita’ Rom. fatta 

allo stesso signor ed ultimamente soppressa 

Letters of justification written to Lord Charlemont and 

you the Agents of Rome 

text and drawings series 

12. 1760 Carceri d’Invenzione 

Prisons of the Invention 


13. 1760s Caffé degli Inglesi in Piazza di Spagna 

The English Coffee House 

executed architectural project 

14. 1761 Della magnificenza ed architettura de’romani opera di Gio Battista 

Piranesi socio della reale accademia degli antiquari di Londra 

On the magnificence and architecture of Romans 


15. 1761 Le Rovine del Castello dell’Acqua Giulia Situato in Roma Presso S. 

Eusebio e Falsamente detto dell’Acqua Marcia Colla Dicharazione di 

uno de’Celebre Passi del Comentario Frontiniano e Sposizione della 

Maniera con cui gli Antichi Romani Distribuiuan le Acque per uso della 

Citta 

Ruins of the castellum of the Acqua Iulia 


16. 1762 Descrizione e disegno dell’emissario del Lago Albano di Gio. Battista 

Piranesi 

Description and design of the emissarium of Lago Albano 


17. 1762 I. B. Piranesii Lapides Capitolini, Sive, Fasti Consulares 

Triumphalesq(ue) Romanorum ab Urbe Condita usque ad Tiberium 

Caesarem 


xix

18. 1762 Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Opera di G. B. Piranesi socio della 

real societa’ degli antiquari di Londra 

The Campus Martius of ancient Rome 


19. 1764 Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo Descritte ed incise da 

Giovambattista Piranesi 


20. 1764 Antichità di Cora, Descritte ed Incise da Giovambattista Piranesi 


21. 1764 Di due Spelonche Ornate Dagli Antichi alla Riva del Lago Albano 


22. 1764 Raccolta di alcuni disegni del Barbieri da Cento detto il Guercino incisi 

in rame , e presentati al singolar merito del Sig. Tommaso Jenkins 

pittore, ed accademico di S. Luca, in atto di respetto e d'amicizia 

dall’architetto e suo coaccademico: Gio Battista Piranesi 


23. 1764 San Giovanni in Laterano comprising west-end-design 

architectural project 

24. 1764-66 Santa Maria del Priorato and its piazza 

executed architectural project 

25. 1765 Three essays published under the title of Parere su l’architettura: 

1. Osservazioni sopra la lettre de Monsieur Mariette 

Observations on the letter of Monsieur Mariette 


2. Parere su l’architettura 

Opinions on architecture 


3. Della introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti in Europa 

xx

ne’ tempi antichi 

On the introduction and progress of the fine arts in Europe in 

ancient times 


26. 1769 Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi 

Diverse manners of ornamenting chimneys and all other parts of the 

buildings 

text and drawing series / architectural projects some of which were 

executed 

27. 1774 Pianta di Roma e del Campo Marzio 

Plans of Rome and the Campo Marzio 

text and a single drawing 

28. 1774 Trofeo o sia Magnifica Colonna Coclide di marmo composta di grossi 

macigni ove si veggono scolpite le due guerre daciche fatte da Traiano 

inalzata nel mezzo del gran Foro eretto al medesimo imperatore per 

ordine del Senato e Popolo Romano doppo i suoi trionfi 


29. 1778 Différentes vues de quelques restes de trios grandes edifices qui 

subsistent encore dans le milieu de l’ancienne ville de Pesto Varie 

[Vedute di Paestum] 

Different Views of Paestum 


30. 1778 Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne ed Ornamenti 

Antichi Disegn 

Vases, Candelabra, Low Pillars, Sarcophagi, Tripods, Lanterns and 

Antique Design Ornaments 


xxi

CHAPTER 1 

INTRODUCTION 

The objective of this thesis is to render an extensive interpretation of the work of 

the eighteenth-century Italian architect, architectural historian, archaeologist and scholar 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). While Piranesi, as befits his immense output, 

has been studied very elaborately, one may equally claim that he has been under-studied 

since most of the work done on him, especially in the English language, comprises 

misinterpretation of a remarkable oeuvre. Thus at the same time that this thesis offers its 

positive arguments about Piranesi, it also aims at explaining the nature of the 

misinterpretation. The vectors of approach that yield misinterpretation of Piranesi 

essentially derive from two phenomena that were, roughly speaking, the products of the 

nineteenth century which were quietly, imperceptibly blended into Piranesi studies of 

the twentieth century. One is the early nineteenth-century Romanticist mode of 

reception and transmission of Piranesi’s character and work. The second is the 

codification of architectural history as it was concluded by the last quarter of the 

nineteenth century. As the chapters below demonstrate, both of these have served to 

relegate Piranesi to a domain where he has been identified with eccentricity that has 

made him appear unclassifiable. He has thus been excluded from the ‘story’ of the 

progress of the western history of architecture variously as too “eclectic” to belong to a 

specific stylistic school or period or as “utopic” in the way the “avant-garde” may 

become utopic. More precisely he has been described as representative of a “utopia of 

subjective negation” possible “only in the ivory-tower land of the avant-garde.” 1 

Piranesi is indeed unclassifiable, but he is so in the way radical innovators tend 

to be unclassifiable in terms of the very categories which their innovation will 

eventually have generated. Piranesi lived and worked at that moment in history that saw 

the rise of disciplines which are inseparable ground of our discourse today: architectural 

history and archaeology. He was immensely instrumental in the creation and invention 

of these two fields. While all Piranesi critics acknowledge this architect’s enormous 

creativity, there are only a very few who recognize his originary contribution to the 

1 Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and Labyrinth: Avant-gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to 

the 1970’s (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1978), p. 34. 

1

constitution of these fields. Thus while this thesis aims at demonstrating Piranesi’s 

contribution to the disciplines of an architectural archaeology and the historiography of 

architecture, it necessarily also demonstrates the reasons for the erroneous reception of 

his work. 

Piranesi was an architect, and the argument of this thesis by no means implies 

that despite this essential orientation Piranesi in time changed his direction. The 

archaeology that had developed until his day was predominantly a philologically 

oriented antiquarianism and Piranesi aimed at placing it upon architectural ground. 

Similarly, his approach to the historiography of architecture derived from research into 

building materials and construction techniques. The major spokesman of the competing 

view of architectural history that was developing in Piranesi’s lifetime was Johann 

Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). Contrary to Piranesi’s architecturally oriented 

view of architectural history, Winckelmann’s, which eventually became the dominant 

view in currency even today, comprised an aesthetically oriented stylistic approach. 

In the framework of Piranesi, the history and archaeology of architecture were 

inseparable. We must remember that many of the archaeological sites familiar to us 

today, even those in Italy and in Rome, had been either recently uncovered or were 

being uncovered in Piranesi’s lifetime, with Piranesi participating in the excavations. 

Somewhat remoter in space, the pyramids—which, along with the rest of Egyptian 

architecture, so interested Piranesi—were not going to be explored until the end of the 

century, the time of the Napoleonic campaign into Egypt. Piranesi wrote his views in 

textual form. Intensely bent on driving his argument throughout Europe, he wrote a lot 

of his texts simultaneously in the three languages of English, French, and Italian. He 

was a gifted writer, sharp polemicist, and exceedingly well read in classics and 

moderns. Though this statement in no way is meant to detract from the persuasiveness 

of his written argument, Piranesi mounted his fundamental arguments in elaborate series 

of drawings. Piranesi’s architectural drawings and etchings are the most trenchant 

instruments for his arguments. In fact, recent criticism has begun to recognize in them 

an innovative direction pointing at the future of architectural drawing. 

Piranesi had arguments about architecture which had not been spoken, written or 

drawn before. He, for example, conjectured to draw parts of ancient buildings that were 

still not excavated and remained underground. In order to show the historical layers of 

stylistic and constructional derivation or to draw the co-presence of archaic, ancient, 

medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, etc. layers in a given vista, he had need for a mode of 

2

drawing with multiple planary orders and vanishing points, for which the extant 

classical-Albertian mode of architectural drawing did not provide room. Even today, his 

manner of drawing is deemed fantastic, utopic, idiosyncratic or eclectic at best by even 

architectural historians as prominent as Joseph Rykwert, Manfredo Tafuri, and John 

Wilton-Ely. At worst, he is deemed “mad,” “frenzied,” “megalomaniac,” “bizarre,” and 

“depressive.” This thesis rejects all of these characterizations to demonstrate that, in 

order to extricate architectural drawing from the constraints of the classical paradigm 

and devise a novel manner, Piranesi resorted to widely used modes of representation 

available in his culture. Most prominent among these were the genre of drawing (and 

painting) named the capriccio; Venetian stage design that had reached post-Baroque 

sophistication in his time; and the philosophy of the sublime. The latter was being 

elaborated by thinkers as significant as Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Immanuel Kant 

(1724-1804) and drew its illustrations mostly from architecture. The philosophy of the 

sublime, which generated this aesthetic category in contradistinction to the classical 

‘beautiful’, functioned to demonstrate the difference of the new kind of thing Piranesi 

was after. Similarly the capriccio enabled him to bring together the empirically real (the 

extant artefact above ground) and the non-existent (the un-excavated archaeological 

underground). Venetian stage design again enabled the depiction of yet-unexcavated 

archaeological space as well as the multiplanar layering of the representation of history. 

All of them together enabled the drawing of architectural projects that might no longer 

constitute the imitatio of the ancients. But the important point is that Piranesi was not an 

unclassifiable eccentric. He found all his means in his immediate environment. 

Methodologically, this thesis required archival research on original materials and 

books printed during and before Piranesi’s time. Equally, it required access to 

secondary literature published in rare or older periodicals and books. These were made 

largely possible by a grant from the Institute’s Research Fund, which enabled ordering 

of archival and old materials as microfilm print and, wherever permissible, as 

photocopy. Thus, determining the most fertile collections in the world that contain 

materials by and about Piranesi was the initial phase in research. Near-exhaustive lists 

of primary and secondary material available in the British Library, the Pierpont Morgan 

Library, the Avery Fisher Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University, 

the Cambridge University Libraries, the University of Chicago Library, and Oxford 

University Libraries were compiled as a first step. 

3

This process included identification of visual and textual works by Piranesi. 

Textual materials proved relatively easier to identify than drawings as the number of 

Piranesi’s drawings were, in 1902, surmised to be around two thousand. 2 Thus it was 

decided to limit thesis research to the study of those drawing and textual materials that 

were published by Piranesi in his own lifetime. Upon this basis, reproductions of 

original publications and, where extant, modern editions of those original publications 

were obtained in microfilm print. Regarding secondary literature, one tried to obtain as 

much material as time and funds permitted. The secondary material obtained and 

studied is indicated in the discussion below and in the bibliography of secondary 

sources at the end of the thesis. The primary material obtained too is exhaustively 

discussed in the thesis. In preparing the bibliography, however, of primary sources at 

the end of the thesis, exhaustiveness has been placed before availability. Preparation of 

this bibliography was necessary in order to determine an order list, and given that no 

exhaustive primary bibliography on Piranesi is available in print, this bibliography has 

been included in the thesis as a contribution to Piranesi studies today. 

Given the scope and time-limits of a master thesis and the difficulties involved 

in long-distance archival research, original manuscripts and drawings were not 

consulted. To the extent possible, material studied included visual and textual work by 

Piranesi’s contemporaries and predecessors. 

The approach of the thesis is historical in the sense that it aims at understanding 

Piranesi’s project in his own environment. This aim naturally involves two directions of 

historical research: the first is to work one’s way through the layers of interpretation 

spanning Piranesi’s after-culture and the present, and thereby understanding—to the 

extent possible—the layers of mediation shaping our reading of Piranesi. The second is 

to trace Piranesi’s itinerary so as to identify his engagements, contacts, what he read and 

what he knew, in order to be able to re-construct the context in which he produced. 

Thus the first chapter below, entitled “Why Is Piranesi Misinterpreted: Le style 

c’est l’homme même,” addresses one of the vectors of present-day misreadings of 

Piranesi and identifies it as the historical construction of a certain kind of psychological 

character for Piranesi through which, then, the work is interpreted. The root of this 

2 The number of Piranesi’s drawings are surmised to be about two thousand and to comprise 

twenty-nine folio volumes. See W. J. Woodworth, “Piranesi: The Rembrandt of Architecture,” Brush and 

Pencil 10:5 (August 1902): 277. Many more drawings have emerged, however, since Woodworth took 

count in 1902. 

4

identification of man-and-work is located in the seminal statement by a contemporary of 

Piranesi’s: Georges-Louis Leclerc’s (1707-1788) proverbial Le style c’est l’homme 

même (the style is the man himself). Though famous for this statement, Leclerc 

nevertheless was not original: he was drawing on a deeply entrenched belief in western 

culture that can be traced back to Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) and shown to have 

remained continuous throughout history, through Leclerc, up to our day. 

Leclerc’s conception identifying ethos and style was applied to Piranesi already 

in his own lifetime, as the first section of the chapter demonstrates. But Leclerc’s 

statement did not necessarily carry negative implications. In Piranesi’s lifetime, it 

mostly served the recognition of the higher order of his creativity and contribution. The 

placement of Piranesi’s work and character on the darker side of the human arose with 

the Romanticist period that marked the aftermath of the French Revolution. The second 

part of the chapter lays out the breadth of the Romanticist reception of Piranesi’s work 

and delineates the casting of the architect as sinister “Byronic Hero” and the architect’s 

contribution to creation of the space of the Gothic novel, both of which, to the 

Romantics, bore positive implications. It traces the transformation of this positive poetic 

perception of Piranesi into a rigidified apprehension of him by architectural historians 

of our day in a negative approach. 

Since what is at stake in this misconception is found to be a slanted view of 

Piranesi’s life and person and since there have been no biographies written of Piranesi 

since his own century, it became necessary to compose Piranesi’s life, which Chapter 3 

takes up. This chapter, called “Architectural Biography of Piranesi,” proceeds in the 

order of Piranesi’s practical and written or drawn work as well as aiming at tracing his 

professional contacts and engagements. 

Chapter 4, “Why Is Piranesi Misinterpreted: Fletcher’s Tree of Architecture,” 

addresses the second component in the present-day misinterpretation of Piranesi’s work. 

On the basis of the biographically drawn itinerary of his work in Chapter 3, the first part 

of Chapter 4 pulls together the strands of architectural, archaeological, and theoretical 

work conducted by Piranesi in order to map out his conception of architectural history. 

Piranesi claimed that Roman architecture derived not from the Greek, but from the 

Etruscan, which, according to him, derived from Egypt. The second part of the chapter 

looks at the codification of architectural history in the nineteenth century, most 

prominently evinced in Sir Banister Fletcher’s (1866-1953) A History of Architecture 

(1896), and traces to that codification the exclusion of Piranesi from the standardized 

5

progress of architectural history in the west and his identification by ‘idiosyncracy’. 

Conflated with the Romanticist mediation of the dark madman, the view of idiosyncracy 

is demonstrated to have generated interpretations of Piranesi which few today attempt to 

question. One example is the interpretation of Piranesi’s stance as Orientalist by 

contemporary scholars following Edward Said. Winckelmann’s approach rooting the 

origin of Roman architecture in the Greek came to dominate the standard history of 

architecture in contrast to Piranesi’s. Thus, with the vogue created by Said, it became 

rather easy to interpret Piranesi’s drawings, filled with Egyptian motifs, as “Orientalist.” 

Chapter 5, concerning, “Asia, Europe, Africa and History of Styles in the 

Eighteenth Century” proceeds to describe and discuss the debate that resonated 

throughout eighteenth-century Europe and concerned the historical origins of European 

architecture. Numerous important eighteenth-century works were produced in the 

context of the emergence of the discipline of architectural history. In this architectural, 

historical, and archaeological framework, Piranesi played an important role by his 

visual and literary works as well as original approach to history. He developed a history 

of architecture that was not based on the East/West division and the separation of the 

continents. In opposition to writers like Winckelmann who rooted the origin of Roman 

architecture in the Greek, he claimed that Roman architecture derived from the Etruscan 

which found its roots in Egypt. Discussion of roots depended in the eighteenth century 

on aesthetical theory interpreting Grecian architecture as ‘beautiful’ and Roman—and 

thus Egyptian—as ‘sublime’. Piranesi was spokesman of the latter argument. The 

chapter demonstrates the presence, in Piranesi’s culture, of a vision of a unified world 

made up of the three old continents, which enabled Piranesi to envision transitions 

between Egypt and Italy. The chapter conducts the demonstration cartographically, from 

ancient times to Piranesi. 

Chapter 6, “Piranesi Between Classical and Sublime,” reflects on Piranesi’s 

relationship to the philosophy of the ‘sublime’ as elaborated in Burke’s A Philosophical 

Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and Kant’s 

Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764). The eighteenth- 

century debate on the relationship and difference between the ‘beautiful’ and the 

‘sublime’ in fact was accelerated by the emergence of aesthetic philosophy, which both 

drew on and influenced the disciplines of architecture and architectural history. 

Aesthetic debates merged with the debate on origins. Since the Grecian manner had 

traditionally been taken as representing the ‘beautiful’, the philosophy of the ‘sublime’ 

6

offered Piranesi space for inserting his view of architectural history, differentiating a 

stylistic and building vector that cut from Egypt to Italy. The demonstration takes on the 

form of Piranesi’s re-working of his contemporaries’ drawings of the ‘beautiful’, 

converting them to the ‘sublime’. The chapter weaves together the diverse strands of the 

capriccio drawing and the philosophy of the sublime in order to trace how Piranesi 

drew on two such diverse contemporary phenomena to articulate a vision of 

architectural archaeology and history which had no precedent. 

Piranesi seemed firmly to believe that both his thought and work would persist 

in posterity. He gained widespread acceptance, even posthumously generating or 

contributing to movements of and taste for such phenomena as “Egyptomania,” 3 Gothic 

revivalism, and eclecticism, about neither of which he probably would have been too 

enthusiastic. Around the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, Piranesi’s 

popularity diminished. At that point in history there was even at least one museum that 

did not accept a donation of his plates for lack of shelf space proper to the plates’ 

dimensions. 4 There arose a revival of interest, though, in the wake of Dada, Surrealism, 

and Futurism. 5 These, however, drew on the Romantics’ dark Piranesi, a Piranesi that 

could be employed to shock bourgeois sensibility and speak against the reality principle 

in the name of the unconscious. It was in this psycho-political framework too, that 

studies on Piranesi flourished in the aftermath of World War II. In Aldous Huxley, in 

1949, Piranesi became the paradoxical commentator on incarceration, both harbinger 

and critic of the Brave New World. 6 Even in the hands of architectural historians, this 

Piranesi, like Huxley’s Piranesi, was still De Quincey’s and Coleridge’s fellow “Opium- 

Eater.” 

This thesis aims at restoring Piranesi to architectural history. 

3 Rudolf Wittkower, “Piranesi and Eighteenth Century Egyptomania,” Studies in the Italian 

Baroque (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), pp. 259-73; see especially p. 272. 

4 Philip Hofer, “Piranesi as Book Illustrator,” Piranesi, exhibition catalogue, Smith College 

Museum of Art, 4 April-4 May 1959 (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 1961), p. 87. 

5 On the interpretation of Piranesi as the first modern architect and a reference point for 

Surrealism, see Jennifer Bloomer, Architecture and the Text: The Scripts of Joyce and Piranesi (New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 4. For similar interpretations, see Peter Proudfoot, “Giovanni 

Battista Piranesi, Neo-Classicism and the Rise of the Free-style in Architecture,” Architecture Australia 

74: 3 (1985): 74. 

6 Aldous Huxley, Prisons, with the ‘Carceri’ Etchings by G. B. Piranesi (London: Trianon Press, 

1949), p. 21. Also see Huxley, The Brave New World (New York: Harper Collins, 1932; 1999). 

7

CHAPTER 2 

WHY IS PIRANESI MISINTERPRETED: LE STYLE C’EST 

2.1. Identifying Man and Work 

L’HOMME MEME 

Already the heading of this chapter indicates that this thesis largely disagrees 

with current interpretations of Piranesi’s work. Contemporary scholarship has taken 

Piranesi’s work as representing a style of architecture described as “obscure,” 

“excessive,” “irrational,” and the like. The work is further perceived as “exaggerated,” 

“extravagant,” “paradoxical,” “absurd,” “hermetic,” “frenetic,” or “ludicrous.” 1 This 

chapter demonstrates that such observations derive not from an investigation of the 

work itself, nor from an appraisal of the historical context, but owe to the long-standing 

view in western culture that identifies the creator’s ethos with the work and interprets 

the work so as to cohere with that pre-constructed ethos. In fact, the pervasive 

description of Piranesi’s work as cited above goes hand in hand with the description of 

the biographical character as “obscure” and “perverse.” 2 “Obsessive,” “chaotic,” 

“absurd,” and “frenetic” are other familiar adjectives that have been found fit to 

describe Piranesi’s character, 3 as has been the diagnosis of “suicidal mania.” 4 For 

1 For the evaluation of “obscure,” “extravagant,” and “excessive,” see Joseph Rykwert, The 

First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 

1980), pp. 364, 370; for “excessive,” “paradoxical,” “absurd,” “hermetic,” and “irrational,” see Tafuri, 

Sphere and Labyrinth, p. 27 et passim.; for “frenetic,” “ludicrous,” “extravagant,” see Nicholas Penny, 

Piranesi (London: Oresko Books; New York: Hippocrene Books, 1978), pp. 7, 10, 30; for “frenetic,” 

“extravagant,” see John Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer (New York: Pierpont Morgan 

Library; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 12, 18; for similar evaluations by 

Wilton-Ely in his introduction to the volume, see his edition of Piranesi’s Observations on the Letter of 

Monsieur Mariette: With Opinions on Architecture, and a Preface to a New Treatise on the Introduction 

and Progress of the Fine Arts in Europe in Ancient Times, introduction John Wilton-Ely (Los Angeles 

and California: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art & the Humanities, 2002), pp. 16, 27. 

2 For this evaluation of Piranesi’s character, see Tafuri, Sphere and Labyrinth, pp. 41, 47; 

Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 389; Penny, Piranesi, pp. 29, 80. 

3 For the description of Piranesi’s character as “obsessive,” “chaotic,” and “absurd,” see Tafuri, 

Sphere and Labyrinth, pp. 36, 49; for “obsessive,” see Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 370; for “frenetic,” see 

Penny, Piranesi, p. 30, and Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, p. 12. 

4 Paul F. Jamieson, “Musset, De Quincey, and Piranesi,” Modern Language Notes (1956): 106. 

8

Piranesi’s Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne ed Ornamenti Antichi 

Disegn (1778), a work depicting Piranesi’s designs of objects including vases and 

candelabri, 5 “it is all done with obsessional, with almost morbid precision,” claims 

Rykwert, “the morbidity is characteristic, since the whole of Piranesi’s overwhelming 

output is the celebration of his necrophiliac passion for the glory of ancient Rome.” 6 

Tafuri agrees, presenting Piranesi as a “‘wicked architect’, who, in the monstrousness of 

his contaminations, reveals the cracks guiltily repressed by a deviant rigor.” 7 

These are astounding words as far as descriptive terms go where architectural 

historians as eminent as Rykwert and Tafuri are concerned. Far from any architectural 

or design consideration, unabashedly they target a psychological being. Contemporary 

Piranesi criticism participates in an understanding which we may summarize by 

Leclerc’s proverbial Le style c’est l’homme même: the style is the man himself. 

Leclerc’s identification dates to 1753, which makes him Piranesi’s contemporary. 8 

Despite the fact that we shall argue that there is a direct line between Tafuri and 

Rykwert’s assessment and Leclerc’s statement, Leclerc had not necessarily meant the 

remark in a negative sense. Piranesi, however, may very well have been the first whose 

work was evaluated by Leclerc’s statement, already in his own lifetime, and, as we are 

going to see, with negative effect in the long-run. 

When we trace the conception identifying ethos and style, we find that it has 

ancient roots. Already rhetorical philosophers such as Aristotle and Longinus (first 

century AD), identified style and the creator’s (orator’s or writer’s) character and 

described style as the direct expression of the psycho-ethical nature of the ‘man’. While 

speaking of propriety (decorum), with the intention of determining that ‘the style 

reflects the man himself’, “Words are like men,” wrote Aristotle in the Rhetoric 9 and, as 

James A. Coulter has argued, proceeded to map out the ways in which linguistic and 

5 Piranesi, Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne ed Ornamenti Antichi Disegn, ed 

inc. dal Cav (Rome: n.p., 1778; Paris: n.p., 1836). 

6 Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 370. 

7 Tafuri, Sphere and Labyrinth, p. 47. 

8 Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, first pronounced the statement in his Discours sur Le 

Style. Discours Prononcé a l’Académie Française par M. De Buffon Le Jour de sa Réception Le 25 Août 

1753 (Paris: Librairie Ch. Poussielgue, 1896; J. Lecoffre, 1872), p. 23. 

9 Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, trans. J. H. Freese (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 

Press; London: William Heinemann, 1994), 1404b 8-12. References to this work will be henceforward 

indicated in parentheses in the text. 

9

human ethos were analogous. 10 According to Coulter, Aristotle’s phrase of “Words are 

like men” implied that the canons of behavioral propriety were applicable to 

compositional style: the style of a man was his dress (1405a 10-14). Similarly in the 

Poetics, Aristotle identified genre with author’s character: “Poetry, then, was divided 

according to the innate ethics [of the poet]: for those who were more solemn imitated 

decent doings and the doings of decent persons, while those who were meaner imitated 

those of foul persons, at first making satires just as the others [at first] made hymns and 

eulogies.” 11 “When tragedy and comedy appeared, those incited [by these kinds] were 

drawn according to their innate nature toward one or the other [of the kinds] of poetry. 

Some became makers of comedies instead of lampoons, others of tragedies instead of 

epics” (1449a). 12 Aristotle explicitly found that a creator chose genre and style 

according to his innate character. Aristotle’s identification proved seminal. As we are 

going to see, the depictions of Piranesi in his own lifetime attributed a lofty character to 

him in conjunction with his work in the design of monumental and sublime architecture. 

Misreading the eighteenth-century code for sublime monumentality, later critics were 

going to identify it with dark perversity. 

The view identifying the creator’s ethical character with the work continued in 

the eighteenth century as above all Leclerc’s statement evinced. In fact, the placement 

of Piranesi’s work and character to the darker side of the human may be traced back to 

the modern re-emergence, with new vigor, of the classical idea around 1750. Piranesi’s 

1750 depiction by the Venetian Felice Polanzani (1700-1783), published in the former’s 

Opere varie di architettura (1750), may be read in this context (Fig. 2.1). 13 The facial 

expression is far from demure and humble. Piranesi’s character stands heightened, with 

a broken arm as in the relics of Antiquity which the burgeoning field of archaeology 

was uncovering. The Antiquity here ascribed to Piranesi derives from the eighteenth- 

10 James A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later 

Neoplatonists (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), p. 18. 

11 Aristotle, The Poetics, ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell, in Aristotle, The Poetics. Longinus, 

On the Sublime. Demetrius, On Style (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William 

Heinemanm, 1982), 1448b. References to this work will be henceforward indicated in parentheses in the 

text. 

12 For the continuity of the identification of ethos and style from Antiquity to the eighteenth 

century, see Deniz engel, “‘Poetry’ and Ethics,” “Emergences of Literature: Reading and History in 

Sidney’s Poetics,” Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1996, pp. 52-104. 

13 Piranesi, Opere varie di architettura prospettive, grotteschi, antichità; inventate, ed incise da 

Giambattista Piranesi Architetto Veneziano (Rome: n.p., 1750; Paris: n.p., 1836). 

10

century theory of sublime architecture to which Piranesi contributed very substantially 

both in design and in writing. Ancientness and monumentality, a heightened stance and 

darkened surroundings were essential characteristics of the sublime. 14 The clouds and 

the play of light and shadow surrounding the architect’s bust, the book symbolizing his 

vast learning and intellectual authority signified to the eighteenth-century mind the 

nature of both Piranesi’s character and his work. But Polanzani’s portraiture of Piranesi 

is not negative at all. It is an example for identifying ethos with work; in this case an 

Figure 2.1. Felice Polanzani, portrait of Piranesi, Opere varie, 1750 

14 Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, trans. Frank John 

T. Goldthwait (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 47-50; 

Edmund Burke, On Taste, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and 

Beautiful with several other Additions, Reflections on the French Revolution, A letter to a Noble Lord, ed. 

C. W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation, 1757; 1937), pp. 41, 45-51, 62-69, 101-102. 

References to these works will be henceforward indicated in parentheses in the text. 

11

acknowledgement of Piranesi’s contribution to monumental and sublime architecture as 

in his Le antichità romane (1756), Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma (1762), and the 

two Carceri series—Invenzioni capricci di carceri (1745) and Carceri d’invenzione 

(1760). 15 Similarly, Joseph Nolleken’s bust of the architect, made in the late 1760s, 

comprises a study in character (Fig. 2.2). Clearly in the heroic genre, this bust too, 

signifies the authority of the architect-intellectual and would have equally represented, 

to Leclerc’s century, the nature of Piranesi’s work as belonging to the higher genres of 

architecture. 

Figure 2.2. Joseph Nolleken, portrait bust of Piranesi, late 1760s 

There is no proof, however, in that sculpted face full of attention, containing a 

keenness of vision from which nothing would escape, of “Piranesi’s volatile and 

irascible character.” 16 John Wilton-Ely’s reading of the bust may be said to derive from 

a post-Romanticist, dark ethos constructed for Piranesi. By the late 1760s, the mere fact 

of representation in a bust implied high seriousness and significant contribution in art 

15 Piranesi, Le antichità romane (Rome: n.p., 1756); Piranesi, Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma 

(Rome: n.p., 1762); Piranesi, Carceri, d’Invenzione (Rome: n.p., 1760); Piranesi, Invenzioni capricci di 

carceri (Rome: n.p., 1745). References to the Campo will be henceforward indicated in parentheses in the 

text. 

16 Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, p. 35. 

12

and science. There are very numerous examples to which one may turn. A rather 

explicit one is offered by William Kent (1685-1748) in his Temple of British Worthies 

(1734) in Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire (Fig. 2.3). Depicted here in bust are the 

financer Thomas Gresham; architect Inigo Jones; poet John Milton; poet William 

Shakespeare; philosopher John Locke; mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and 

chemist Isaac Newton; philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon; king Alfred the Great; 

Edward, the Black Prince; queen Elizabeth I; king William III; poet, writer, and 

explorer Sir Walter Raleigh; privateer, navigator, politician and civil engineer Francis 

Drake; politician John Hampden; author Sir John Barnard; and poet Alexander Pope: all 

major figures who contributed in the arts, science, state or—in one case—finance. Thus 

Nolleken’s bust is rather indicative of Piranesi’s artistic and scientific contribution in 

areas—aside from architecture per se—such as technical drawing, 

Figure 2.3. Michael Rysbrack and Peter Scheemakers, busts of British Worthies, Stowe Gardens, 1729 

13

icnographic drawing, and particularly the measured drawing of archaeological 

structures—a burgeoning field in the eighteenth century. 17 

Instead of appraising the work by considering the creator’s character alone, not 

only his work, but the milieu of the spectator or reader of these works and the historical 

as well as wider textual context of eighteenth-century architectural thought ought to be 

taken into consideration. We need, in other words, a more wholistic historical approach. 

But the modern mainstays of western interpretations of the history of architecture 

remain reductive. Yet another example is the all-influential Meyer Howard Abrams who 

summarizes extant models in modern criticism, and in doing so becomes himself a 

major spokesman of reductionism. 18 Abrams draws a table in which he constructs a 

scheme of four categories: work, artist, universe, and audience. He claims that every 

approach or critical method privileges one of artist, audience or universe in relation to 

the work, by which the work becomes transparent and a starting point for accessing 

artist, audience or the conception of universe. Abrams’ table demonstrating these 

relations is given in Table 2.1. 

Table 2.1. Abrams’ construction demonstrating the co-ordinates of art criticism 

UNIVERSE 

WORK 

ARTIST AUDIENCE 

The mode of criticism dominant in the misleading approach to Piranesi may be said to 

privilege the ‘artist’ category and find the man in the style of the ‘work’. But in fact it 

would be treating the ‘work’ like a transparent entity directly and unproblematically 

17 For Piranesi’s contribution in the area of drawing, see Werner Oechslin, “Piranesi to 

Libeskind: Explaining by Drawing,” Daidalos 1 (September 1981): 15-35; Javier Girón, “Drawing and 

Construction Analysis: from Piranesi to Choisy,” The Second International Congress on Construction 

History, Volume 1, ed. Malcolm Dunkeld et al., Proceedings, Queens’ College, Cambridge University, 29 

March-2 April 2006 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 74-76. 

18 For the following account of the relations between the work-and-creator, work-and-universe 

(nature), and work-and-spectator, and for the construction demonstrating the co-ordinates of art criticism 

in Table 2.1, see Meyer Howard Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical 

Tradition (New York: The Norton Library, 1958), pp. 6-8. 

14

epresenting the creator. In Piranesi’s case, the work has been taken like a transparent 

entity—like glass—through which the Piranesian vision and psyche are at once 

conveyed to the spectator (of the architectural work) and the reader (of his architectural 

writings). 

2.2. Piranesi Fashioned as Romantic “Opium Eater” 

The two Carceri series bear primary importance in this context because they 

have been accepted as transparent works particularly reflecting Piranesi’s so-called 

darkness, obscurity and madness. 19 The darker perception of Piranesi and his work most 

concretely goes back to Romanticism and this movement’s conception of the creative 

character as dark and unique. 20 This conception made room for heightened creativity 

and a darker, but richer, imagination by use of intoxicating drugs, most ostensibly 

opium. Thus in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) Thomas de Quincey 

(1785-1859) described Piranesi’s work: 

Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi’s antiquities of Rome, Mr Coleridge, who 

was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which 

record the scenery of his visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them […] represented 

vast Gothic halls; on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, 

pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance 

overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping 

his way upwards, was Piranesi himself; follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it 

comes to a sudden, abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no steps onwards to 

him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor 

Piranesi?—you suppose, at least, that his labors must in some way terminate here. But raise your 

eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, by 

this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eyes, and a still more aerial 

flight of stairs is beheld; and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors; and so on, until 

the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same 

power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my architecture proceed in my dreams. 21 

19 For an implication of darkness and madness in the Carceri see Tafuri, Sphere and Labyrinth, 

pp. 26, 32-34, 40; Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (London: Thames and 

Hudson, 1978), pp. 81, 89; Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, pp. 46-48. 

20 On the disposition for darkness in the age of Romanticism, see Mario Praz, The Romantic 

Agony, trans. Angus Davidson (Oxford, London, Glasgow: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 27. 

21 Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, ed. with introduction by Alethea 

Hayter (1821; London: Penguin Books, 1971), pp. 105-106. For Hind’s interpretation of the De Quincey 

passage see Arthur Mayger Hind, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi and His Carceri,” Burlington Magazine 19: 

98 (May 1911): 81. 

15

De Quincey was describing the Carceri plate in Fig. 2.4, and it is already interesting 

that Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who apparently introduced De Quincey to 

the Carceri, referred to the work as Dreams. 22 Coleridge himself was addicted to 

laudanum (opium) already in his twenties, and irreversibly so by 1800-1802, 23 which 

De Quincey described in “Coleridge and Opium-Eating.” 24 

Figure 2.4. Plate VII, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760 

22 Hind, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi and His Carceri,” p. 81. For De Quincey’s interpretation of 

the Carceri as dreams also see Jamieson, “Musset, De Quincey, and Piranesi,” Modern Language Notes 

(1956): 105-108. 

23 James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, eds., Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Literaria 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. xliv-xlv, 17n.5. 

179-258. 

24 Thomas De Quincey, Works, ed. Grevel Lindop (1845; London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000), V: 

16

Coleridge’s perception of Piranesi and the Carceri, and De Quincey’s 

transmission of it to posterity proved as seminal as Aristotle’s identification of ethos 

with style. In 1950, Huxley was going to remark that the Carceri represent, 

“metaphysical […] guilt.” 25 A year before, Huxley had published the Carceri with 

commentary in which he observed that, 

All plates in the series are self-evidently variations on a single symbol, whose reference is to 

things existing in the physical and metaphysical depths of human souls – to acedia and 

confusion, to nightmare and angst, to incomprehension and a panic bewilderment. 26 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England moralist, who had probably seen a few prints 

of the Carceri in 1838, 27 wrote in his journal in 1841 that three authors had opened the 

gates to “new modes of existence” for him: Dante, Rabelais and Piranesi. 28 The 

connection between Piranesi and Dante is perhaps readily evident since early 

nineteenth-century culture would foreground the Carceri and identify it with Dante’s 

Inferno. Emerson in fact wrote of “that infernal architecture of Piranesi.” 29 Nor was this 

perception of the Carceri limited to the English speaking world. As Paul F. Jamieson 

pointed out in his 1956 article, those immensely influenced by this apprehension of 

Piranesi included not only the British Horace Walpole (1717-1797) and William 

Beckford (1760-1844) in addition to Coleridge, De Quincey and Huxley, but also the 

Frenchmen Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Alfred de 

25 Aldous Huxley, “Variations on The Prisons,” Themes and Variations (New York: Harper, 

1950), pp. 207-208. 

26 Huxley, Prisons, with the ‘Carceri’ Etchings by G. B. Piranesi, p. 21. 

27 Martin Christadler, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi und die Architekturmetapher der Romantik,” 

Miscellanea Anglo-Americana: Festschrift für Helmut Viebrock, ed. Kuno Schuhmann (Munich: Pressler, 

1974), p. 105n.1. 

28 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, VIII: 1842-1843 

(Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 97; quoted in Christadler, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi,” p. 78. 

29 Emerson, The Journals, VIII: 7; quoted in Christadler, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi,” p. 105n.1. 

17

Musset, 30 and no one less than Victor Hugo himself. 31 The steps, stairs and spirals of the 

Carceri in fact fascinated the French Romantics enough to warrant book-length study. 32 

Jorgen Andersen rightly argues that Gothic novels such as Walpole’s The Castle 

of Otranto (1764) and Beckford’s Vathek (1786) owe their spatial-architectural 

inspiration to the Carceri. 33 Walpole, who had traveled on the continent, was familiar 

with Piranesi works other than the Carceri and commented in 1771 that, 

This delicate redundance of ornament growing into our architecture might perhaps be checked, if 

our artists would study the sublime dreams of Piranesi, who seems to have conceived visions of 

Rome beyond what it boasted even in the meridian of its splendour. Savage as Salvator Rosa, 

fierce as Michelangelo, and exuberant as Rubens, he has imagined scenes that would startle 

geometry, and exhaust the Indies to realize. He piles palaces on bridges, and temples on palaces, 

and scales heaven with mountains of edifices. Yet what taste in his boldness! What grandeur in 

his wildness! What labour and thought in his rashness and details! 34 

And in a discussion of the “‘Gothic Villain’ and ‘Byronic Hero’” in which she describes 

the cliché of the Romantic hero who is at once “Satan, Cain, The Wandering Jew and 

Prometheus,” Ingeborg Weber’s phrasing of such a hero is reminiscent of the phrasing 

architectural historians use in describing Piranesi. 35 All these terms and person names 

belong to literary figures rather than architectural ones. Yet they are all influential 

names whose perception of Piranesi played rather lasting role. They seem to have been 

influential even in the very fact that architectural historians of the stature of Rykwert 

30 Jamieson, “Musset, De Quincey, and Piranesi,” p. 105. 

31 See Jean Mallion, Victor Hugo et l’art architectural (Paris: Imprimerie Allier, 1962), pp. 250, 

264, 275ff., et passim. 

32 Luzius Keller, Piranèse et les romantiques français: Le myth des escaliers en spirales (Paris: 

J. Corti, 1966). See also Georges Poulet’s classic “Piranèse et les poètes romantiques français,” Nouvelle 

Revue Français 27 (April, May 1966): 660-71, 849-62. 

33 Jorgen Andersen, “Giant Dreams: Piranesi’s Influence in England,” English Miscellany 

(Rome, 1952), III: 49-59. For a reading of The Castle of Otranto as the narrativization of the 

architectonics of the Carceri, see Christadler, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi,” pp. 83ff. Also see Piranesi, 

Carceri, d’Invenzione; Piranesi, Invenzioni capricci di carceri; Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto 

(1764; Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); William Beckford, Vathek (1786; Oxford, 

New York: Oxford University Press, 1904; 1998). 

34 Walpole’s word were quoted from the ‘Advertisement’ of Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of 

Painting in England; with Some Account of the Principal Artists and Incidental Notes on Other Arts, 4th 

ed., vol. 4 (London: Thomas Kirgate, 1771; 1786), p. 398. 

35 Ingeborg Weber, “‘Gothic Villain’ and ‘Byronic Hero’,” English Romanticism: The 

Paderborn Symposium, ed. Rolf Breuer, et al. (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1985), p. 154. 

18

and Tafuri refrain from viewing Piranesi’s work architecturally and frame it from the 

perspective of the Romantic poet and the Gothic novelist. 

More recently, however, there have emerged Piranesi critics who have not only 

not confined Piranesi to Romanticist madness, but even used Romantics like De 

Quincey to extricate Piranesi from this paradigm. Concerned mainly with the Carceri 

series, but also with the quite diverse Vedute di Roma (1748-1778), Prima Parte di 

Architetture e Prospettive (1743), Grotteschi (1745) and Antichità, 36 Peter Proudfoot 

has traced in a 1985 article Piranesi’s emancipation from classical convention in order 

to open up the way for a “free-style architecture” that influenced the late eighteenth, 

nineteenth, and twentieth centuries including the Postmodern movement. 37 Though 

Proudfoot’s approach is supra-historical in a way this thesis is not, his interpretation is 

nevertheless welcome in so far as it recognizes the fact that Piranesi was in pursuit of a 

technique; and beyond technique, a technology of understanding building. Piranesi’s 

research in this vein was directed at archaeological discovery—which Rykwert mistook 

for ‘necrophilia’ and Tafuri confused with ‘monstrosity’. 

Piranesi employed as much imagination and engineering know-how when he 

drew the yet-unexcavated substructures of ancient buildings as he did when he etched 

prisons. It took imagination to do so because the sub-terra structures Piranesi drew, 

which upon later excavations proved to be correct, were not known in his day. In order 

to execute these drawings, he participated in archaeological investigations, scrutinizing 

the buildings in situ. His biographer Jacques Guillaume Legrand conveys an anecdote 

about a site observation Piranesi undertook that could serve as the pre-history to the 

Romanticist perception of the architect’s character. It seems that Piranesi was overtaken 

by bad weather during a site-visit and, deciding not to be deterred by it, donned 

appropriate labor clothes and went to work. To local peasant eyes, he signified an 

uncanny, satanic figure of medieval folklore: 

He was drawing a grotto called del Bragantino, and was measuring the sections, perched on a 

ladder, accompanied by one Petrachi. The weather was stormy and for eight days the thunder had 

been grumbling almost without a break. A fisherman had been watching him for a long time in 

36 Piranesi, Vedute di Roma, Disegnate ed Incise da Giambattista Piranesi (Rome: n.p., 1762; 

1778; 1836); Piranesi, Prima Parte di Architetture, e Prospettive inventate ed incise da Gio. Batta. 

Piranesi Architetto Veneziano dedicate al Sig. Nicola Giobbe (Rome: Stamperia de’Fratelli Pagliarini, 

1743); Piranesi, Le antichità romane. For Grotteschi see Piranesi, Opere varie. 

37 Peter Proudfoot, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Neo-Classicism and the Rise of the Free-style in 

Architecture,” Architecture Australia 74: 3 (1985): 74. 

19

his odd dress (our artist was wearing an enormous hat with the brim turned down and a little 

hunting coat, very short, which gave him rather a fierce appearance) and he imagined that this 

singular character who was gesticulating, writing and often talking to himself, must be a 

sorcerer, and that he was moreover responsible for the bad weather which had gone on 

continuously since his arrival; he spread the idea, the alarm was given and the villagers armed 

and went off to do away with the sorcerer […] It was only by the timely arrival of the Pope’s 

official that he was saved from his fate. 38 

Piranesi was working meticulously in the ruined sites to obtain realistic measurement. 

Although his diligence caused him to be regarded with suspicion by the natives, this 

anecdote shows us Piranesi’s empirical approach to the science of architecture. In the 

preface to the Antichità (1756), he wrote that the mere recording of a monument’s 

external features was insufficient and that this information had to be accompanied by 

plans, sections, internal views, nature of materials, and constructional techniques. And 

all had to be displayed on plate. The peasants were actually witnessing Piranesi at work 

on such a compilation. 

Piranesi was not, however, only criticized by rural folk, but also by 

contemporary colleagues. In a letter to his brother written in the 1760s, Luigi Vanvitelli 

(1700-1773) described Piranesi in the following terms ‘[…] it is a strange thing that the 

mad Piranesi [il Pazzo Piranesi] dares to be an Architect; I shall only say that it is not a 

profession for madmen’. 39 Piranesi apparently was aware of some of his 

contemporaries’ opinion of him. In various places in his work both written and visual, 

he responded to, or rather, commented on, this perception. His comments indicate that 

he had a specific explanation for the misguided perception. They are most elaborate in 

his Antichità and Campo series both of which comprise his archaeological 

investigations (and will be discussed in Chapter 3 below). We cannot stress enough, and 

shall investigate below, the remarkable correctness of Piranesi’s archaeological 

drawings, which, Piranesi found, led some of his contemporaries to deem him mad. 

Indeed, claiming that Piranesi’s drawings are replete with “obscurity” or “caprice,” as 

we find Piranesi described by our contemporaries, constitutes yet another way of 

ignoring his productivity in a new eighteenth-century genre of drawing which he took 

further than contemporary artists like Giuseppe Vasi (1710-1782) or Hubert Robert 

38 Jacques Guillaume Legrand, Nouvelles de l’estampe, no. 5 (1969), p. 207. The translation of 

Legrand’s words is quoted from Ian Jonathan Scott, Piranesi (London: Academy Editions; New York: St. 

Martin’s Press, 1975), p. 174. 

39 Vanvitelli’s words are quoted by Roberto Pane, “Luigi Vanvitelli – l’uomo e l’artista,” Napoli 

Nobilissima 12: 1 (January-February 1973): 42. 

20

(1733-1808), and the earlier Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) had. This genre 

was, precisely, the capriccio that essentially brought together unexpected and 

paradoxical elements. 40 In Piranesi’s hands the capriccio served the purpose of 

scientific invention and design innovation, as well as illustrate his view of architectural 

history. An important moment of recognition is offered by Barbara Maria Stafford in 

her “Bare versus Prismatic Style: Newton, Piranesi and Eighteenth-Century Theories of 

Abstraction in Art and Science,” in which she aproaches the novel, thus paradoxical, 

heterogenity of elements in Piranesi’s work from the perspective of Newtonian science: 

[…] Piranesi materializes the elusive past, visibilizes the broken structure of historical 

knowledge—as Newton visibilized the heterogeneity of light—in the only form by which it had 

come down to the Moderns: as a discontinuous jumble composed of vestiges of a formerly whole 

antiquity that had to be imaginatively reconstructed. Thus Piranesi, like Newton, includes in his 

discovery not only the image of what was formerly remote and inaccessible, but the technique, 

process, derivation by which it was discovered or made manifest. The confused array it brought 

to the surface, and conflicting appearances are set side by side. 41 

Stafford’s argument is tantamount to claiming that Newton himself realized the 

scientific revolution by thinking within the genre of the capriccio. The shifting of the 

classical paradigm in the eighteenth century is thus shown to have produced analogous 

methods in the different disciplines. These methods were bound to seem paradoxical to 

contemporary eyes. 

Piranesi never changed his manner, however, and never waivered in the face of 

hard critique. Perhaps as a reply to all of them, in 1765 he drew Plate IX of the Parere 

su l’architettura (Fig. 2.5). 42 In the superscript of this magnificently innovative 

construction which is at once decorative design, engineered mechanism and visual 

historiography, he inscribed words from the Roman Sallust: “Novitatem meam 

40 On Piranesi’s production in the capriccio genre see, Joanna Augustyn, “Subjectivity in the 

Fictional Ruin: The Caprice Genre,” Romanic Review 91:4 (November 2000): 433-57. According to 

Augustyn, Piranesi’s drawings can be included in the capriccio genre precisely because he drew and reconstructed 

the ruins of Rome not only by the help of his imagination but also by archaeological 

investigation. 

41 Barbara Maria Stafford, “Bare versus Prismatic Style: Newton, Piranesi and Eighteenth- 

Century Theories of Abstraction in Art and Science,” The Romantic Imagination: Literature and Art in 

England and Germany, eds. Frederick Burwick and Jürgen Klein (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 

1996), p. 341. 

42 Piranesi, Parere su l’architettura (Rome: n.p., 1765). Also see Piranesi, “Parere su 

l’architettura,” in Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 140-41. 

21

contemnunt, ego illorum ignaviam”: ‘They despise my novelty, I their timidity’ (Fig. 

2.6). 43 

Figure 2.5. Plate IX, Parere, 1765 

Figure 2.6. Plate IX, detail, Parere, 1765 

Piranesi, of course, could not respond to the posthumous Romanticist 

appropriation of his Carceri. That remains for us to do. As we are going to see in 

Chapter 5 below, the Carceri series, upon which Romanticism based its view of the 

architect, were Piranesi’s contribution to a vitally important eighteenth-century 

43 Sallust’s original words in his Bellum Igurthinum are as follows: “Nunc vos existumate facta 

an dicta pluris sint. Contemnunt novitatem meam, ego illorum ignaviam; mihi fortuna, illis probra 

obiectantur” [Think now yourselves whether words or deeds are worth more. They scorn my humble 

birth, I their worthlessness; I am taunted with my lot in life, they with their infamies]. Piranesi found 

Sallust’s words in “The War with Jugurtha” [Sallust, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge: Harvard University 

Press, 1980), 85. 14]. Piranesi’s inscription in Figure 2.5 is translated by Rykwert as, “They despise my 

humble birth [or: my originality] and I their cowardice” in First Moderns, p. 380; by Wittkower as, “They 

despise my novelty, I their timidity” in “Piranesi’s Parere su l’architettura,” Journal of the Warburg 

Institute 2 (1938-39): 155n.81. Also see Piranesi, “Parere su l’architettura,” in Observations on the 

Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 78n.99, 153. 

22

movement to which that century greatly owes the name of ‘Enlightenment’: the 

movement for the humanization of the penal code and system, and the abolishment of 

the death penalty. 

There is larger difficulty involved in understanding and interpreting an architect 

and writer by considering him in his own time and in his own context, rather than 

reading him as if he lived, worked and thought in an environment no different from 

ours. The research to be done is immense and Piranesi’s oeuvre is complex. The failure 

of his major interpreters may be attributed to these factors and the very complex 

character of the eighteenth century. There is equally the necessity to work one’s way 

through the mediation of the Romantics’ perception which, as we have seen, twentieth- 

century critics tended to take for granted. Before we map out the milieu in which 

Piranesi wrote, drew and otherwise produced his work, however, an overview of his 

training and engagements is in order. Since so much contemporary Piranesi criticism 

today identifies man and work in an impasse of obsessive darkness, let us first trace the 

man. This will prove all the more worthwhile as there are no comprehensive modern 

biographies of Piranesi. 

23

CHAPTER 3 

ARCHITECTURAL BIOGRAPHY OF PIRANESI 

There is no modern comprehensive biography of Piranesi. His earliest 

biographer is Legrand, whose Notice historique sur la vie et sur les ouvrages de J. B. 

Piranesi, Architecte, Peintre et Graveur was published in 1799. 1 Piranesi was born in 

Mogliano near Mestre (in Venice), on 4 October 1720, as the son of a stone-mason. 2 

The Italian surname “Piranesi” derived from Piran in Istria and meant ‘from Piran’. 

Unsurprisingly perhaps for an architect keen on researching origins and etymologies, 

the patrinomic Piran must have borne special effect on Piranesi’s architectural-material 

preferences as the town was the center of good quality white lime-stone used in 

monuments in Venice. 3 Use of stone in engineering and constructional details can be 

readily found in Piranesi’s drawings. 

His formative years were spent in Venice, which in many ways shaped 

Piranesi’s conception of design so that eventually he was going to sign himself 

architetto veneziano, 4 or in its Latin version Architectus Venetus, frequently abbreviated 

in plates as Archit. V. We have seen that others referred to him in the same fashion (Fig. 

2.1). Yet Piranesi focused more on Rome than on Venice in the course of his career. 

This may have been expected because he grew up listening to stories of Roman heroes 

of Antiquity and their achievements told by his uncle Angelo. Angelo was a Carthusian 

1 Legrand in Notice historique sur la vie et sur les ouvrages de J. B. Piranesi, Architecte, Peintre 

et Graveur [...] Redigée sur les notes et les pieces communiquées par ses fils, les Compagnons et les 

Continuateurs de ses nombreux travaux (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale; Milan: G. Morazzoni, 1799; 

1921) which was also published in Nouvelles de l’estampe, No. 5, 1969, p. 194. Also see Wilton-Ely, 

Mind and Art, p. 12; Luigi Ficacci’s introduction “The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” 

to Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The Complete Etchings (Cologne and London: Taschen, 2005), pp. 7-39. 

For a brief biographical sketch, see Adolf K. Placzek, “The (Classical, Baroque, Rocco, Romantic, 

Modern) Vision of Piranesi,” Harvard Magazine 80 (January-February 1978): 27-33. 

5. 

2 For information about Piranesi’s birth, see Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 9; Penny, Piranesi, p. 

3 On Piran’s importance for Venice as a lime-stone center, see Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect 

and Designer, pp. 1-2. 

4 On Piranesi’s signature of architetto veneziano see Hind, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi and His 

Carceri,” p. 81; Felice Stampfle, “An Unknown Group of Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi,” Art 

Bulletin 30: 2 (1948): 122-41; Wittkower, “Piranesi as Architect,” in Smith College Museum of Art’s 

exhibition catalogue, Piranesi, p. 99. 

24

monk and tutored Piranesi in Latin and ancient history. 5 Already before he reached his 

twenties, Piranesi decided to become an architect. Still in Venice, he was first 

apprenticed to his maternal uncle Matteo Lucchesi who was an architect and hydraulics 

engineer in the Magistrato delle Acque, a unit responsible for developing the Republic’s 

harbor and the construction of the murazze (the cyclopean masonry walls protecting the 

Venetian lagoon from the waves of the Adriatic). 6 Before 1740, he also worked with the 

Palladian architect Giovanni Scalfarotto (1690-1752) who was the senior colleague of 

Lucchesi from the Magistrato. Piranesi worked with him on the design of the church S. 

Simeone Piccolo overlooking the Grand Canal. While working with Scalfarotto, 

Piranesi assisted Scalfarotto’s nephew, the architect Tommaso Temanza (1705-1789), 

participating in measuring the Augustus Bridge in Rimini of which drawings were later 

published by Temanza under the title of Antichità di Rimini. 7 Temanza was working on 

the theory and history of Venetian architecture and published eventually, in 1778, a 

collection of biographies of sixteenth-century Venetian sculptors and architects. 8 

Temanza was also involved in the remains of Classical Antiquity, whereby he may have 

initiated an interest in Piranesi for Roman Antiquity and archaeology. 9 

In the artistic and theoretical context of Venice, during Piranesi’s youth, the 

Franciscan monk Carlo Lodoli’s (1690-1761) teachings had currency. Lodoli’s 

arguments were based generally on the function and use of materials and architectural 

aesthetics. Lodoli examined the origins of Roman architecture and posited Etruscan 

stone construction as the prototype of Roman structures. He also advocated that 

Etruscan architecture had been derived from the Egyptian—as Piranesi too was going to 

5 On Piranesi’s education in Latin and history with his uncle, see Peter John Murray, Piranesi 

and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), p. 8; Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as 

Architect and Designer, p. 3, 32n.6. 

6 For Piranesi’s apprenticeship to his maternal uncle see Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 315; 

Ficacci’s introduction “The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista 

Piranesi, p. 13. 

7 Tommaso Temanza, Le antichità di Rimini (Venice, 1741). Besides, for Piranesi’s participation 

with Temanza in the measurements of the Augustus Bridge in Rimini, see Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as 

Architect and Designer, p. 9, 32n.20. 

8 Temanza, Vite dei più celebri Architetti e Scultori Veneziani che fiorirono nel Secolo 

Decimosesto (Venice, 1778); ed. L. Grassi (Milan: Labor, 1966). 

9 For Wilton-Ely’s interpretation of Temanza’s influence on Piranesi see his Mind and Art, p. 9. 

On Temanza’s work, see Temanza, Le antichità di Rimini; Temanza, Vite dei più celebri Architetti; 

Lionello Puppi, “La fortuna delle Vite nel Veneto dal Ridolfi al Temanza,” Il Vasari. Storiografo e artista 

(Florence, 1976), pp. 408-26. 

25

claim later—and thought even that the Doric order must be called the Egyptian order on 

account of its origins. 10 There was already some research and excavation done for 

Lodoli’s unorthodox views to be tested by empirical proof, but for the greater part, his 

theory required imagination. Giambattista Vico (1668- 1744) had published the Principi 

di una scienza nuova (Principles of a new science) in 1725, in which he had stated that 

the only way to comprehend the past was through imaginative study of the architectural 

and literary remains of the past. 11 Vico’s philosophy offered a freedom for new 

directions of regarding those architectural and literary remains which were coupled by 

Lodoli’s unconventional application in architectural theorizing. Piranesi too, was going 

to produce drawing and literature alike by support of the findings at excavations and by 

reference to ancient texts. Although we do not find any clear reference to Vico in 

Piranesi’s works, we know that Vico had influenced Lodoli and his teachings which 

Piranesi was well aware of when he was in Venice in his formative years. 

Aside from acquaintance with Lodoli’s teachings, the importance of Venice 

appears also in Piranesi’s conception of stage design, since opera houses and theatres 

were offering opportunities for the imagination of young designers. “[T]he many opera- 

houses in that pleasure resort,” observed Alpheus Hyatt Mayor, “did not attract their 

international audiences by well-written plays, but by the ingenious contrivance of their 

scenery.” 12 Legrand claims that in his formative years Piranesi studied stage design. His 

training in stage design oddly is a controversial topic for some scholars like Peter John 

Murray, who maintain that Piranesi lacked such training. 13 Others, like Wilton-Ely, 

deem such training rather probable. 14 We can, however, observe strong traces of stage 

design in Piranesi’s drawing as diverse as, for example, the Carceri series and the 

Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi (1769). 15 

10 For Lodoli’s advocation of Etruscan and Egyptian architectures and for his interpretation of 

the Doric order, see Wilton-Ely’s Introduction to his edition of Piranesi’s Observations on the Letter of 

Monsieur Mariette, p. 21. 

11 Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold 

Fisch (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1970). 

12 Alpheus Hyatt Mayor, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (New York: H. Bittner & Co., 1952), p. 4. 

13 Murray, Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome, p. 8. 

14 Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 10. 

15 Piranesi, Carceri, d’Invenzione; Piranesi, Invenzioni capricci di carceri; Piranesi, Diverse 

maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, 

e Greca, con un ragionamento apologetico in difesa dell’architettura Egizia e Toscana […] (Rome: n.p., 

26

Moreover, we know that he extensively studied different perspective techniques under 

different masters, and perspective technique and stage design largely overlapped in the 

Venice of the time. Piranesi’s drawing technique reflects the influence of the Venetian 

perspective expert Carlo Zucchi, from whom we know Piranesi learnt perspective 

techniques as well as etching. 16 Wilton-Ely argues that Piranesi had studied perspective 

with the Valeriani brothers who were working on stage designs. Similarly, we know that 

he was also trained in perspective under Ferdinando-Galli Bibiena (1657-1743), 17 who 

had invented the perspective device named scene vedute per angolo. 18 Nonetheless, we 

may at least be certain that Piranesi had studied Bibiena’s treatise, Architettura civile 

Figure 3.1. Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Copper 23, scene design viewed at an angle, Architettura civile, 

1711 

1769; Paris: n.p., 1836). References to the latter work will be henceforward indicated in parentheses in 

the text. 

16 For information about relations between Carlo Zucchi and Piranesi, see Ficacci’s introduction 

“The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, p. 13; Penny, 

Piranesi, p. 5. 

17 For a brief discussion of Piranesi’s training in perspective under Bibiena see Wilton-Ely, Mind 

and Art, p. 10; and Penny, Piranesi, p. 5. 

18 Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Architettura civile preparata su la Geometri (Parma, 1711). Also 

see Bibiena, “Architettura civile,” The Italian Baroque Stage, trans. and commentary by Dunbar H. 

Ogden (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 46-47. 

27

preparata su la Geometri of 1711, which set forth the principles of the said perspective 

device. 19 One may compare, for example, Bibiena’s Copper 23 (Fig. 3.1) from 

Architettura civile and Piranesi’s Gruppo di Scale (Fig. 3.2) from the Prima Parte 

(1743), the latter evinces study of Bibiena, Piranesi’s Gruppo di Scale is a faithful 

application of Bibiena’s scene vedute per angolo. 

Figure 3.2. Gruppo di Scale (Stairs), Prima Parte, 1743 

By the time he went to Rome as a draughtsman in 1740, in the commission of 

the ambassador Marco Foscarini, Piranesi’s mind must have been replete with views 

representing the achievements and magnificence of the Roman past. The Roman 

landscape of the time was dominated by antique fragments and early Christian basilicas 

as may be glimpsed in Giovanni Paolo Pannini’s (1691-1765) 1747 city-scape (Fig. 

3.3). While these views stimulated Piranesi’s imagination, he must have despaired of 

the insufficient job potential for young architects in Rome. Apart from Foscarini’s 

support, during his first years in Rome, Piranesi worked in the studio of the Venetian 

builder Nicola Giobbe, who offered him the use of his books and engravings and 

showed him the important Roman monuments. Furthermore, in Giobbe’s studio, 

Piranesi was introduced to two eminent architects of his day, Luigi Vanvitelli and 

Niccolò Salvi (1697-1751). 20 

19 For Venetian painters’ method of designing scenes see Bibiena, “Architettura civile,” p. 64. 

20 For Piranesi work in Giobbe’s studio and his acquaintance with the said architects, see Wilton- 

Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, pp. 1-2, 3, 32n.8; Ficacci’s introduction “The Discovery of 

Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, p. 27. 

28

Figure 3.3. Giovanni Paolo Pannini, View of the Roman Forum, 1735 

In this environment, Piranesi apparently decided to work on topographical 

engraving; for, he entered the studio of the Sicilian engraver Vasi who had been the 

pupil of Filippo Juvarra (1678-1736) and was an eminent vedute (views) engraver of 

Rome. Piranesi learnt from him techniques of etching for vedute drawings. They drew 

Roman landscape pictures to sell to tourists—especially to British aristocrats—coming 

on the Grand Tour. 21 In Vasi’s studio Piranesi established friendship with Polanzani 

who drew the Piranesi portrait we saw in Fig. 2.1. According to Legrand, Piranesi 

eventually quarreled with Vasi who observed that, “You are too much of a painter, my 

friend, to be an engraver.” 22 We will have occasion to return to this statement in Chapter 

6. 

Piranesi had to develop his own etching style to express his own unique 

architectural and historical viewpoint as well as his archaeological hypotheses. Probably 

21 The Grand Tour was an intellectual tour including Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland 

and topped university studies. Rome was the center and starting point of this tour. The eighteenth-century 

artistic and social character of Rome has been rendered in the exhibition catalogues Il Settecento a Roma, 

Mostra promossa dall’Associazione Amici dei Musei di Roma, 19 March-31 May 1959 (Rome, 1959); and 

The Academy of Europe: Rome in the Eighteenth Century, The William Benton Museum of Art 

(University of Connecticut, 1973). Also see V. E. Giuntella, Roma nel Settecento (Bologna: Cappelli, 

1971), and Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 11. 

22 See Legrand in Notice historique sur la vie which was also published in Nouvelles de 

l’estampe, p. 194. 

29

in order to do this, in the years 1743 and 1744, he undertook a trip to the south to see 

the Herculaneum excavations lying south-east of Naples, Vico’s city. 23 The 

Herculaneum excavation had been launched in 1738. Pasteur Bardet had taken over the 

excavation in 1741 and was going to head them until 1745, so we may conjecture that 

Piranesi made this prominent archaeologist’s acquaintance. The primary importance of 

Piranesi’s participation at Herculaneum is that, while archaeology—really termed 

‘antiquarianism’ before Piranesi—had until then been a kind of treasure-hunting out to 

look for precious, collectible artefacts, the work done at Herculaneum was geared 

toward uncovering architectural remains toward revealing the urban texture as a 

whole. 24 

Piranesi became a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia (founded in 1690) 

which had a wide artistic perspective on the visual arts. 25 The Accademia must have 

borne substantial influence on Piranesi as he used the Arcadian pseudonym Salcindio 

Tiseo in the drawing series of the Prima Parte including twelve plates dedicated to 

Giobbe. Werner Oechslin maintains that around this time, Piranesi established 

familiarity with a number of books prepared before his time but published relatively 

recently, all of which bore significance for archaeological drawing: Bianchini’s 

drawings of the Palazzo de’Cesari, published posthumously in incomplete form 26 and 

his and Gori’s drawings of the Camere de’ Liberti 27 were among these. 28 Via Appia had 

23 On the history of excavations in Herculaneum, see Christopher Charles Parslow, 

Rediscovering Antiquity, Karl Weber and the Excavations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially pp. 19-30, pp. 38ff. 

24 For the impetus of the discoveries at Herculaneum in the emergence of archaeology and for the 

description of the general environment in which this discipline arose, see Carlos Sambricio, “Piranesi y el 

Parere,” Revista de Ideas Estéticas (Madrid), trans. Ester Benítez, no. 117 (1972), pp. 82ff. 

25 For the importance of the Accademia dell’Arcadia in eighteenth-century Rome, see Sandro 

Benedetti, “L’architettura dell’Arcadia, Roma 1730,” in Bernardo Vittone e la disputa fra classicismo e 

barocco nel Settecento: Atti del convegno internazionale promosso dall’Accademia delle scienze di 

Torino […], 21-24 settembre 1970 (Turin: Accademia delle Scienze, 1972), 337-91; see also Benedetti, 

“Per un’architettura dell’Arcadia: Roma 1730,” Controspazio 3: 7-8 (1971): 2-17. For Piranesi’s 

participation in the Accademia, see Wilton-Ely’s Introduction to his edition of Piranesi’s Observations on 

the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, p. 5. 

26 Francesco Bianchini, Del Palazzo de’Cesari opera postuma (Verona: Berno, 1738). 

27 Bianchini, Camera ad Inscrizioni Sepulcrali de’ Liberti, Servi, ed Ufficiali della Casa di 

Augusto scoperte nella Via Appia [...] (Rome: Salvioni, 1727); Antonio Francesco Gori, Momentum sive 

Columbarium Libertorum et Servorum Liviae Augustae et Caesarum Romae detectum in Via Appia anno 

1726 [...] (Florence: Tartinius & Franchius, 1727). 

28 Werner Oechslin, “Pyramide et sphère: Notes sur l’architecture révolutionnaire du XVIII e 

siècle et ses sources italiennes,” Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., 77 (1971): 401. 

30

een discovered in 1726. In 1731, there had appeared yet another book of drawing on 

the discoveries, namely by Pierleone Ghezzi. 29 We may surmise that Piranesi found 

access to an archive where he might see these books in the milieu of the Accademia. 

Thus with Oechslin, we may state that it was entirely understandable that Piranesi 

included in his Prima Parte of 1743 a view of the same Camera de’ Liberti. 30 

But Piranesi arrived at results very different from those in his models, the 

predecessor etchings mentioned above. Differences even superficially observable 

between Piranesi’s Mausoleo antico (Fig. 3.4) from the Prima Parte and Bianchini’s 

elevation of Palatine (Fig. 3.5) from the Del Palazzo de’Cesari Verona already 

Figure 3.4. Mausoleo antico, Prima Parte, 1743 

29 Pier Leone Ghezzi, Camere Sepolcrali di Liberti e Liberte di Livia Augusta et altri Cesari 

(Rome: Rossi, 1731). 

30 Werner Oechslin, “L’intérêt archéologique et l’expérience architecturale avant et après 

Piranèse,” Piranèse et les Français. Colloque Tenu la Villa dicis, 12-14 Mai 1976, ed. Georges 

Brunel (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1978), p. 401. 

31

Figure 3.5. Elevation of Palatine, Del Palazzo de’Cesari Verona, 1738 

demonstrate that Piranesi Verona already demonstrate that Piranesi was researching into 

an alternative, into a way of drawing that would be truer to the nature of the historical 

science of archaeology than to the classical art of drawing employed in designing 

buildings ex nihilo. If the art of architectural design was based on the Albertian grid of 

orthogonals and diagonals as in Bianchini’s elevation, we find in Piranesi’s plate an 

approach that replaces octagonal representation by an idealized perspective that confers 

upon the archaeological artefact a situated-ness (with context) and condition outside the 

Albertian grid. We may also once again observe in Fig. 3.2, Piranesi’s use of Venetian 

stage design techniques. 

We shall only for now call Piranesi’s an “idealized perspective.” In Chapter 6 

below, we are going to locate the precise eighteenth-century context where Piranesi 

found the means of underscoring the difference for archaeological drawing aside from 

stage design, namely the philosophical category of the sublime. But Piranesi equally 

found the justification for the difference in the genre of the capriccio. At the time, in the 

1740s, Piranesi was conducting his research in a manner which we may term the 

antique capriccio. 

This style of drawing in Prima Parte which was found peculiar to Piranesi in his 

time and is found peculiar today, nevertheless caused him to establish friendship with 

32

art and architecture students in the Académie de France in Rome. 31 Most Piranesi critics 

would not agree with our reading. They do not find that Prima Parte carries unique 

importance in Piranesi’s career because it contains some plates which served him as 

basis for establishing his own architectural style. In fact, Piranesi was experimenting 

with different means of bringing together available innovative techniques, seeking for 

the appropriate balance/synthesis between the architectural and archaeological. The 

Prima Parte plate entitled Gruppo di Scale (Stairs) we saw above (Fig. 3.2), which was 

produced by Bibiena’s perspective device of the scene (Fig. 3.1), was going to establish 

Piranesi’s reputation. It is worth mentioning here at least the names of some other 

memorable plates from the Prima Parte: Carcere oscura (Dark prison) (Fig. 3.6), 

Mausoleo antico (Ancient mausoleum) (Fig. 3.4), Galleria grande di Statue (Large 

sculpture gallery) (Fig. 3.7), Campidoglio antico (Ancient Capitol) (Fig. 3.8), and Ponte 

magnifico (Magnificent bridge) (Fig. 3.9). 32 These plates address diverse themes and 

Figure 3.6. Carcere oscura, Prima Parte, 1743 Figure 3.7. Galleria grande di Statue, Prima 

Parte, 1743 

31 For the relations between Piranesi and the students of Académie de France see Wilton-Ely’s 

Introduction to his edition of Piranesi’s Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, p. 5. For the 

foundation of Académie de France see Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts 

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 190-91. 

32 For the whole Prima Parte plates and their titles in English, German and French see Ficacci, 

ed., Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 

33

Figure 3.8. Campidoglio antico, Prima Parte, 1743 

Figure 3.9. Ponte magnifico, Prima Parte, 1743 

architectural types. Common to all of them, however, is the focus on layering of 

historical-structural-stylistic strata. It was perhaps in this framework that Bibiena’s 

technique of the scene proved particularly helpful to Piranesi’s purposes: Bibiena’s 

method of the scene necessarily focused on such layering for the simple reason that, 

quite differently from the realist-naturalist stage of the nineteenth century, the theatrical 

stage of the time was painted or drawn on multiple panels that represented more often 

exterior urban sites than interiors or rural landscapes. Thus the scene involved the 

34

drawing of architectural layers, structures which did not always find their spatial 

articulation from the perspective of a single vanishing point in the rear of the stage. 

Thus, “how to change the vanishing point” in mid-scene, and how to construct, with 

painted panels, a “ceiling perspective,” for example, were among prime problems. 33 The 

plates in Fig. 3.6 and 3.7 handle these questions simultaneously. Drawing for the stage 

equally included using oblique wings which presented particular problems. Bibiena 

demonstrated their solution in Copper 24 of his book (Fig. 3.10). 

Figure 3.10. Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, Copper 24, designing scenes by using the method of Venetian 

painters , Architettura civile, 1711 

We may also glance at Baldassare Orsini’s (1732-1810) Le scene del nuovo 

Teatro del Verzaro di Perugia (1785) for juxtaposition with Piranesi plates of the Prima 

Parte. 34 Orsini’s Le scene was yet another work of Venetian stage-design practice. 

Piranesi’s Carcere oscura in the Prima Parte (1743, Fig. 3.6), and Plate VI of later 

Carceri (1760, Fig. 3.11), seem to have been re-worked from Orsini’s Plate XIII in the 

Le scene (1785, Fig. 3.12). Orsini’s Plate XI (1785, Fig. 3.13) is reminiscent of 

Piranesi’s Ponte Magnifico (1743, Fig. 3.9), and Plate X (1785, Fig. 3.14) recalls 

Campidoglio antico (1743, Fig. 3.8). We also find close similarity between Orsini’s 

Plate LXVII (Fig. 3.15)—providing a solution for Problem VI concerning how to 

represent a scene viewed at an angle on the wings—in his Della geometria e prospettiva 

33 Bibiena, “Architettura civile,” p. 160. 

34 Baldassare Orsini, Le scene del nuovo Teatro del Verzaro di Perugia (Perugia, 1785). Also see 

Orsini, “Le scene,” in The Italian Baroque Stage, pp. 98-166. 

35

pratica 35 (1773) and, again, Piranesi’s Gruppo di Scale from the Prima Parte (1743, 

Fig. 3.2). Martin Christadler maintains that the Carceri derive from theater and stage 

design. 36 The examples juxtaposing Orsini and Piranesi should prove him right. Ulya 

Vogt-Göknil, whose 1958 book is the first detailed study of the reception of Piranesi’s 

Carceri in the field of literature, argues that far from serving isolation and incarceration, 

the architectonics of the Carceri ‘serve to connect and to mediate’ and finds that the 

bridges, stairs, hanging chains and ropes for swinging are reminiscent of theatrical sets 

and should be researched in relation to such set design in Piranesi’s vicinity. 37 Finally, 

Maurizio Calvesi, in his Introduction to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, ascribes much of 

the aspects of Piranesi’s work to “esperienza scenorafica”—scenographic experience. 38 

Figure 3.11. Plate VI, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760 

35 Orsini, Della geometria e prospettiva pratica (Rome, 1773). Also see Orsini, “Geometria,” in 

The Italian Baroque Stage, pp. 76-83. 

36 Christadler, “Giovanni Battista Piranesi,” p. 78. 

37 Ulya Vogt-Göknil, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Carceri (Zürich: Origo Verlag, 1958), pp. 40- 

45. Also see Vogt-Göknil, “Piranesi als Architekturtheoretiker und Polemiker,” Piranesi tra Venezia e 

l’Europa, ed. Alssandro Bettagno, proceedings, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 13-15 October 1978 

(Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1983), pp. 389-95. 

38 Henri Focillon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, ed. Maurizio Calvesi e Augusta Monferini, 

Traduzione di Giuseppe Guglielmi, A translation of “Giovanni-Battista Piranesi” and “Essai de Catalogue 

de l’œuvre de J.-B. Piranesi” (Bologna: Alfa, 1967), p. VI. 

36

Figure 3.12. Baldassare Orsini, Plate XIII, Le scene, 1785 

Figure 3.13. Baldassare Orsini, Plate XI, Le scene, 1785 

37

Figure 3.14. Baldassare Orsini, Plate X, Le scene, 1785 

Figure 3.15. Baldassare Orsini, Plate LXVII, Geometria, 1773 

As we are going to see again in Chapter 6 below, Piranesi was going to continue 

throughout his lifetime to re-draw others’ drawings. These re-workings did not express 

his “megalomania” that made him deem himself superior so as to be able to improve 

others’ work. 39 He was trying to dislocate drawing from the classicist paradigm, 

demonstrating this difference in concrete relation to concrete extant drawings. 

39 For the interpretation of Piranesi’s “megalomania” see Banister Fletcher, A History of 

Architecture, ed. Dan Cruickshank (Oxford: Architectural Press, 1996), p. 846. 

38

In 1743 and 1744, as already mentioned, Piranesi joined the excavations at 

Herculaneum. Nonetheless his financial resources were running out. Thus he had to 

return to Venice in 1744. 40 In 1745, with Académie de France students, Piranesi 

published the collective work entitled Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna. 41 This 

work has ninety drawings: forty-three of them were signed by Jean Barbault (1718- 

1762), Laurent Le Geay (1710-1786) and Philothée-François Duflos (1710-1746), all of 

whom were students of Académie de France. Forty-seven were signed by Piranesi. 

Piranesi’s drawings have, however, more elaborate character than the others’. When we 

compare Duflos’ and Barbault’s drawings, Piranesi’s difference becomes quite obvious. 

As proof of Piranesi’s influence, we may cite the drawing of the Arch of Constantine by 

Barbault (Fig. 3.16) to compare it with Piranesi’s drawing of the same (Fig. 3.17). 42 

Piranesi’s drawing dates to 1748 while Barbault’s is dated 1761. Piranesi’s 

relinquishment of the frontal section for the scene vedute per angolo that offers 

simultaneous views of outside and inside—thus of the totality of the building—and the 

articulation of the front façade along with the side, as well as the environmental context 

is evident in Barbault in 1761. 

Figure 3.16. Jean Barbault, L’Arco di Costantino Monumenti di Roma antica originale, Les plus beaux 

Monumens de Rome ancienne, 1761 

40 For information about Piranesi’s return to Venice and the cause of this return see Ficacci’s 

introduction “The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, pp. 16- 

18. 

41 Piranesi, Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna incise da Celebri Autori a Spese di Fausto 

Amidei (Rome: n.p., 1745). 

Roma. 

42 Jean Barbault, Le plus beux monumens de Rome ancienne (Rome, 1761); Piranesi, Vedute di 

39

Figure 3.17. Veduta dell’ Arco di Costantino, Vedute, 1748 

Another figure that was prominent in Piranesi’s milieu whose work enables us to 

situate Piranesi’s project was Pannini, perspective professor at the Académie de France 

whose fantasy drawings of ruins belong to this period of the birth of archaeology (Fig. 

3.3). Pannini also worked on stage designs for Juvarra. Piranesi’s engravings were 

imaginary compositions designed on the basis of real views of ruins. Pannini’s works 

also were imaginary compositions which were drawn accurately to obtain a more 

realistic sense of the past. 

In 1747, Piranesi turned from Venice to Rome again, to sell his engravings to the 

Venetian merchant Giuseppe Wagner. He communicated with Juvarra who was 

designing the stage for the theatre of Cardinal Ottobani of the Cancelleria. After 

meeting with Juvarra, we find Piranesi again producing a set of drawings (Fig. 3.18), 

this time re-interpreting Juvarra’s early works for Filippo Amadei’s opera Teodosio il 

Giovane. 43 Research into Juvarra reveals what is a most important clue for this thesis’ 

argument about Piranesi: we thereby come to the source of where Piranesi may have 

come across the idea of demonstrating a different effect precisely by re-working a given 

drawing, as we are going to find him doing in Chapter 6 below. Though more archival 

research is required to date the drawings, the mode in which Juvarra’s architectural 

fantasy of a Scena per angolo with trophies (Fig. 3.19) is re-worked by Antonio Galli- 

Bibiena (Fig. 3.20) underscores Piranesi’s engagement with Galli-Bibiena. Working in 

43 Filippo Juvarra, Scena di Teodosio il Giovane Filippo Amadei (Rome, 1711). For Piranesi’s 

communication with Juvarra and for discussion of Piranesi’s drawings after Juvarra see Murray, Piranesi 

and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome, pp. 20-21. 

40

Rome was re-inforcing Piranesi’s inclination toward archaeological investigation, and 

in 1748 he began the series Vedute di Roma which were continued throughout his life. 

Figure 3.18. A sketch by Piranesi after Juvarra’s design for Amadei’s opera Teodosio il Giovane of 1711 

Figure 3.19. Filippo Juvarra, Scena per angolo 

Figure 3.20. Antonio Galli-Bibiena, Scénographie 

41

Piranesi’s other important work of 1750 were the Opere varie. Two specifically 

important plates in this work are the Parte di ampio magnifico porto (Fig. 4.7) and 

Pianta di ampio magnifico collegio (Fig. 3.21), which drew great attention from young 

architects of the time. Among them were Académie pensionnaires like Charles de 

Wailly (1729-1798) and Marie-Joseph Peyre (1730-1785) (Fig. 3.22). 44 These drawings 

provided new design ideas and represented a creative way in architecture, and remained 

archaeological. 

Figure 3.21. Pianta di ampio magnifico Figure 3.22. Marie-Joseph Peyre, engraved plan of 

collegio, Opere varie, 1750 project for an Academy, detail, “Plan 

d’un bâtiment qui contiendrait les 

académies,” Oeuvres d’architecture, 

1765 

The internal spatial distribution in Peyre’s project for an Academy (Fig. 3.22) 

appears to have been inspired by Piranesi’s Collegio (Fig. 3.21) and by the younger 

architect’s investigation of Roman baths, particularly evident in the symmetrical 

44 For information about Académie pensionnaires following Piranesi’s style see Murray, 

Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome, pp. 30-35. Marie-Joseph Peyre’s drawing in Fig. 3.22 was 

published in his Oeuvres d’architecture. Nouv. éd., augm. D’un discours sur les monuments des anciens 

comparés aux nôtres et sur la manière d’employer les colonnes (1765; Paris: Microéditions Hachette, 

1979). 

42

location of the exedra and equally inspired by Piranesi. 45 Similarly, Christadler links the 

Carceri to Piranesi’s investigation of Roman thermal architecture. 46 We ought to recall 

also that by the eighteenth century, Renaissance architecture itself was object of 

archaeological interest, both in itself and in terms of the continuities with, and thereby 

clues to, Antiquity it presented. Thus we may regard the Palladianism of Piranesi’s 

Collegio and its revisionistic continuation in Peyre’s Academy equally part of the 

archaeological engagement and as an aspect of the influence Piranesi was by this time 

wielding on younger architects. 

Piranesi was interested in young designers, and he often addressed them about 

the formation of a new architecture. British architects on the Grand Tour too, were 

impressed by his style. We can mention among them Sir William Chambers (1726- 

1796), the Adam brothers, Robert Mylne (1734-1811), and George Dance the Younger 

(1741-1825). One of the most important of these was Robert Adam (1728-1792) who 

met Piranesi in June 1755. He and his brother James Adam (1730-1794) benefited 

greatly from Piranesi’s ideas and drawings. 47 While preparing the Campo, Piranesi 

worked on site with Robert Adam. The young architect was by his side as Piranesi 

examined not only the literary sources concerning the Roman site but also the Severan 

Plan. 48 Piranesi also dedicated his drawing series of the Campo—generating new ideas 

seminally for the architecture of posterity—to Robert Adam. The detail of the medallion 

depicting the adjacency and relationship of Piranesi and Robert Adam demonstrates the 

persistence with which Piranesi sought to leave his trace on the archaeological 

architecture of the future (Fig. 3.23). Sir William Chambers’ two-volume work, A 

Treatise on Civil Architecture appeared in 1759, after his return to England from Rome 

in 1755. In it, Chambers confirmed Palladian principles but proposed their application 

45 Oechslin, “L’intérêt archéologique,” p. 409. 


47 English architects James and Robert Adam were brothers and achieved prominence especially 

at the end of the eighteenth century. Robert Adam met Piranesi in Rome and studied with him. So the 

“Adam style,” the invention of Robert Adam, bears Piranesian design features and rests on Piranesi’s 

theories, even though the Adam brothers are today classified as Neo-Classical architects. For Adam 

brothers and their relations with Piranesi see Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 65, 67. 

48 For information about Severan Plan see p. 48 below. 

43

upon the basis of a two-fold study: the monuments of Roman Antiquity and 

contemporary Italian architects, foremost among whom was Piranesi. 49 

Figure 3.23. Detail of medallion depicting Piranesi and Robert Adam, Campo, 1762 

This interaction, and to claim that Piranesi bore significant influence on the said 

architects may come as a surprise since Peyre is known as the Parisian Neo-Classicist 

just as Chambers is known for Neo-Classicism. Both names belonged to the height of 

eighteenth-century international Neo-Classicism. Piranesi is not generally classified as 

Neo-Classical. But we must understand that Piranesi’s encyclopaedic approach to an 

archaeological architecture necessarily included Neo-Classicism. Rudolf Wittkower’s 

distinction between Lord Burlington’s Palladian classicism that included also other 

Renaissance architects who derived their work from Antiquity, and eighteenth-century 

international Neo-Classicism does not quite apply to Piranesi. 50 Wittkower 

distinguished the latter group in terms of their empirical approach to Roman 

monuments. While Piranesi’s empirical research would more immediately bring him 

close to the second group, the first would not be excluded from his domain since 

Palladio, as we saw, was equally a layer in his archaeologism. Nor was a studied 

approach to the past, much in the tradition of Renaissance Italian architects starting with 

49 Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, ed., A Documentary History of Art. Volume II: Michelangelo and the 

Mannerists: The Baroque & the Eighteenth Century (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), 

pp. 293-94. 

71. 

50 Friedrich Saxl, British Art and the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 

44

Brunelleschi, a lesser part of his approach than was the empirical. Thus a wide range of 

orientations, from Le Geay’s to Peyre’s and Chamber’s, could be accommodated in 

Piranesi’s wide perspective. 51 

In 1752 Piranesi got married after a five-day acquaintance. As Murray has 

observed, Piranesi spent his bride’s small dowry on copper plates. 52 From this marriage, 

he had three children—two sons and one daughter—Francesco (1758-1810), Pietro, and 

Laura (1755-1785). Again in 1752, one of his greatest achievements, the revised version 

of the Varie Vedute was published with a new title page describing the plates, most of 

which, as in the earlier edition, were signed by Piranesi. 53 Piranesi had begun to 

establish his own business and career as engraver. Murray’s implication in pointing out 

Piranesi’s spending his wife’s dowry on plates is that Piranesi married upon such short 

acquaintance to be able to use his bride’s dowry on the copper plates, which would 

certainly befit the demonic character as discussed in Chapter 2. But one can as easily 

imagine that Piranesi used the dowry to start a business in order to be able to provide for 

a growing family. There are numerous items of evidence that this was his intention. To 

put it summarily, however, suffice it to say that the business of engraving was so closely 

adopted by the family, that the children not only contributed to it in Piranesi’s lifetime, 

but quite successfully continued it after their father’s death. 54 We have evidence that 

Francesco Piranesi consulted a professional of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris for 

suggestions toward securing the inheritance. 55 

Though he had to make a living from it, Piranesi nevertheless wanted to prepare 

and sell drawings with artistic and intellectual purposes rather than merely commercial 

ones. In 1753, in order to demonstrate painters, sculptors and architects the fertile 

51 For an opposite view, discussing the ‘problem’ of mid-century Neo-Classicists association 

with Piranesi, see John Harris, “Le Geay, Piranesi and International Neo-Classicism in Rome, 1740- 

1750,” Essay in The History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, eds. Douglas Fraser, Howard 

Hibbard, and Milton J. Lewine (London: Phaidon, 1967), pp. 189-96. 

52 Murray, Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome, pp. 30-31, 45. 

53 For information about the revised version of Varie Vedute see Murray, Piranesi and the 

Grandeur of Ancient Rome, pp. 30-31. 

54 Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Francesco Piranesi, Piranesi Vedute e Antichità di Tivoli, ed. 

Vincenzo Conti (Rome: V. Conti, 1996). 

55 Jean Duchesne, Quelques es sur l’Etablissement des Frères Piranesi (Paris, 1802). 

45

character of Roman architecture, he prepared the Trofei di Ottaviano Augusto. 56 In 

1755, he produced a more comprehensive version of this work, the Antichità, which 

comprised four volumes and was published in 1756. Antichità bore great importance on 

account of its drawing technique, archaeological basis and character combining 

engineering technique with architectural design research. It was his opus magnum so far 

and he too seems to have thought so still in 1762, when he compiled an authoritative list 

of its contents (Fig. 3.24). Oechslin finds that it surpassed all archaeological work 

Figure 3.24. Catalogo delle Opere Date Finora alla Luce da Gio. Battista Piranesi, 1762 

56 Piranesi, Trofei di Ottaviano Augusto Innalzati per la Vittoria ad Actium e Conquista 

dell’Egitto on vari altri ornamenti diligentemente ricavati dagli avanzi piu’ preziosi delle fabbriche 

antiche di Roma, utili a pittori, scultori ed architetti, designati ed incisi da Giambattista Piranesi, 

Architetto Veneziano (Rome: Stamperia di Giovanni Generoso Salomoni, 1753; 1780; Paris: n.p., 1835). 

46

produced in Europe up to that day, even making the emergence of the modern discipline 

of archaeology. 57 It indeed evinces an unprecedented attention to detail and 

concentration on each architectural element and ornament. It constitutes an enormous 

stride in the history of the technique of the cross-section (Fig. 3.25 and 3.26). 58 

Figure 3.25. Prospetto esterno dell avanzo de’ portici circulari del Teatro de Marcello, Antichità, IV, 

1756 

Figure 3.26. Pierre-Jean Mariette, measured drawing from the L’Architecture françoise, 1727 


58 Piranesi, Le antichità romane; Pierre-Jean Mariette, L’Architecture françoise, ou Recueil des 

plans, elevations, coupes et profils des eglises, palais, hôtels & maisons particulieres de Paris, & des 

chasteaux & maisons de campagne ou de plaisance des environs, & de plusieurs autres endroits de 

France, bâtis nouvellement par les plus habils architectes, et levés & mesurés exactement sur les lieux 

(Paris: Jean Mariette, 1727). 

47

Antichità is equally held to be the first work since Famiano Nardini (1600- 1661) to 

propel topographical study, 59 and utilizes the more recent Giambattista Nolli’s (1701- 

1756) map of Rome published in 1748 (Fig. 3.27), and the publication of the fragments 

of the grande pianta marmorea (grand plan of marble) prepared by Giovanni Pietro 

Bellori (1613-1696) and published in 1673. 60 Antichità also contains a series of plan 

drawings of Rome. Piranesi drew them by referring to the Forma Urbis Romae, known 

in English as the ‘Severan Marble Plan’, which is an enormous marble map of ancient 

Rome (Fig. 3.28). This map had been constructed by the orders of Septimus Severus 

(146-211). The Severan Plan is an ichnographic plan of ancient Rome, which had been 

drawn on marble tiles. It dates to the third century A.D. Its fragments were not 

discovered until the pontificate of Pius IV (1559-1565), when the principles of 

ichnographic plan were set by Renaissance topographers. 61 Piranesi also referred to this 

marble plan later, in his Campo of 1762. We shall see below, in Chapter 5, Piranesi’s 

defense of his method in the Campo. While drawing the city plans in both Antichità and 

Campo (Fig. 3.29 and 3.30), he may have utilized from some other master works like 

Christophorus Cellarius’s two-volume Notitia orbis antique published in Leipzig in 

1731. 62 Since he had apparently been in close enough association with the Lord 

Charlemont to persuade him to patronize publication of Antichità, he may have had 

occasion to see Cellarius’s work available in the Lord’s library. 63 Antichità came in 

demand of the authorities of the world of art soon upon publication. After this success, 

Piranesi was elected, on 7 April 1757, to the Honorary Fellowship of the Society of 

Antiquaries of London. This society harbored archaeologists. 

59 Oechslin, “L’intérêt archéologique,” p. 402; David Ryley Marshall, “Piranesi, Juvarra and the 

Triumphal Bridge Tradition – Giovanni Piranesi, Filippo Juvarra,” The Art Bulletin 85: 2 (June 2003): 

327. See also Famiano Nardini, Roma antica (Rome, 1666). 

60 Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Fragmenta vestigii veteris Romae ex Lapidibus Farnesianis […] 

(Rome: n.p., 1673); Giambattista Nolli, La nuova topografia di Roma Comasco (Rome, 1692-1756). For 

relations between Piranesi and Nolli, see Ficacci’s introduction “The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit 

of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, pp. 14, 29. 

61 John A. Pinto, “Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan,” Society of 

Architectural Historians 33: 1 (March 1970): 35, n.1. 

1731). 

62 Christophorus Cellarius, Notitia orbis antiqui, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Johann Frideric Gleditsch, 

63 The information of that Cellarius’ Notitia orbis antiqui (in n.62 above) was available in the 

Lord’s library, is reached by the bibliography containing the books listed in the sales catalogue of the 

Charlemont library in 1865. This bibliography was published in, Paul Johnson, W. B. Stanford and E. J. 

Finopoulos, The Travels of Lord Charlemont in Greece and Turkey, 1749 (London: Trigraph, 1984). 

48

Figure 3.27. Giambattista Nolli, detail from the La nuova topografia di Roma Comasco, 1748 

Figure 3.28. Severan Forma Urbis Romae, a fragment demonstrating part of the Subura, a notorious 

neighbourhood of imperial Rome 

Figure 3.29. Plan of Rome, Antichità, I, 1756 

49

Figure 3.30. Plan of Rome, Campo, 1762 

The series of the Antichità and later, of Campo were, therefore, important for 

Piranesi’s career because these plates demonstrated both his scientific knowledge and 

scientific aim. They equally served as proof of his scientific and philosophical 

credibility in the field of archaeology. Since he was described as ‘idiosyncratic’ or as 

‘mad’ rather than an architect, as for example deemed by Vanvitelli, 64 he might have 

tried to prove his abilities as an engineer by the help of these drawings showing Rome’s 

engineering magnificence in diverse constructions like aqua-ducts and subterranean 

structures (Fig. 3.31 and 3.32) with details of their constructional phases and 

construction devices (Fig. 5.19). It should also be pointed out that Piranesi’s tendency 

toward engineering is not surprising because he was born as the son of a stonemason 

and master builder. As already stated at the beginning of this chapter, before going to 

Rome Piranesi was apprenticed to his maternal uncle Lucchesi who was both an 

64 For Vanvitelli’s deem see Chapter 2, p. 20. 

50

architect and hydraulics engineer. These facts clarify how Piranesi’s sublime ‘fantasies’ 

can at once be eulogies to ancient engineering. 

Figure 3.31. Foundations of Hadrian’s Mausoleum (later Castel Sant’Angelo), Antichità, IV, 1756 

Figure 3.32. Part of the foundations of the theatre of Marcellus, Antichità, IV, 1756 

51

As he implied in the above quotation from the Campo, both Antichità and 

Campo were treatises, actually. Piranesi conducted on-site topographical investigations 

and utilized the Severan Plan while preparing the plates of the Campo. Therefore, one of 

the most polemical and famous ‘scientific’ works by Piranesi is from the Campo, the 

Ichnographiam Campi Martii Antiquae Urbis (1762, Fig. 3.33). It displays the ancient 

plan of Rome on the basis of Piranesi’s scientific investigation in the field of 

archaeology. Ichnographia’s principal figures consist of imperial baths, the Palatine 

complex, Hadrian’s villa, reconstructions of Ligorio and Montano. 65 About the 

Ichnographia, Piranesi claimed that, by using the Severan Marble Plan of Rome as 

evidence, he had produced a plan which might be the closest to the real plan of ancient 

Rome. 66 In the following part of the introduction to the Campo, “le quali se taluno 

confronta coll’antica maniera di architettare, comprenderà, che molto da essa si 

discostano, e s’avvicinano all’usanza de’ nostri tempi. Ma chiunque egli sia, prima di 

Figure 3.33. Ichnographiam Campi Martii Antiquae Urbis, Campo, 1762 

65 Alex Krieger, “Between the Crusader’s Jerusalem and Piranesi’s Rome: Conflicting Ideals for 

the City,” Modernism and History: Essays in Honor of Eduard F. Sekler (Cambridge: Harvard University 

Press, 1996), p. 156. 

66 For a discussion of the Severan Marble Plan and Ichnographia, see Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as 

Architect and Designer, p. 40. 

 

52

condannare alcuno d’impostura, osservi di grazia l’antica pianta di Roma” wrote 

Piranesi (Campo, xi): “certainly if anyone compares them [parts of the Campo] with the 

architectural theory of the ancients he will see that they differ greatly from it and are 

actually closer to the usage of our own times. But before any one accuses me of 

falsehood, he should, I beg, examine the ancient [Marble] plan of the city.” 

After the achievement of the Antichità, he signed the Lettere di giustificazione 

scritte a Milord Charlemont e al di lui Agenti di Roma (1757) by referring to his 

election to hold Honorary Fellowship at the Society of Antiquaries of London. 67 The 

Lettere had been prepared because James Caulfield, the First Earl of Charlemont (1728- 

1799), who was going to patronize publication of the Antichità, backed out of his 

commitment. 68 The Lettere represented Piranesi’s complaint of Charlemont in the form 

of three letters. The recipients of the Lettere were not known until about forty years ago, 

when the sheet containing their names was discovered. 69 Some of the names on the list 

remain undeciphered because Piranesi noted only surnames and his spelling was casual 

(Fig. 3.34 shows Lapide del primo frontespizio and facing page with the list indicating 

intended recipients of the Lettere). 

Figure 3.34. Plate VII (Lapide del primo frontespizio) on the left, and facing page on the right, Lettere di 

1757). 

giustificazione scritte a milord Charlemont, first edition, 1757 

67 Piranesi, Lettere di Giustificazione scritte a Milord Charlemont e a’ di lui Agenti (Rome: n.p., 

68 On the Piranesi-Lord Charlemont relationship, see Lamberto Donati, “Giovan Battista Piranesi 

e Lord Charlemont,” English Miscellany (Rome, 1950), pp. 231-42. 

69 For this information see Donati, “Giovan Battista Piranesi,” pp. 231-42, and Smith College 

Museum of Art’s exhibition catalogue, Piranesi, pp. 65-66n.176. 

53

Recipients ranged from the Pope to patrons, connoisseurs, and Piranesi’s colleagues: 

Andrea Rossi, Venetian etcher and engraver 

Perugini, Milanese painter of ruins and landscape 

Francisco Preciado de la Vego, Spanish-born painter and seller of art books 

A Principe of the Academy of St. Luke and Director of the Academy of St. Ferdinand 

Filippo della Valle, prominent Roman sculptor and engraver 

Agostino Masucci, Roman sculptor who was active in the Academy St. Luke, or his son, 

the painter Lorenzo 

Stefano Pozzi, painter and Agostino Masucci’s pupil 

Cavaceppi (the name crossed out), Roman sculptor, restorer and dealer in antiquities 

Raphael Mengs, painter and important follower of Neo-Classicism 

John Russel, English painter and guide for tourists in Rome 

Cavaliere Domenico Gregorini, Roman architect 

Mann, nephew of Sir Horace Mann, British envoy to Florence 

Sir Horace Mann, Florentine artist 

David Murray, second Earl of Mansfield, diplomat and statesman 

Cavaliere Marco Benefiale, Roman painter 

Sir William Hamilton, archaeologist and collector of antiquities while British envoy in Naples 

Sir Brook Bridges, a member of Sir Horace Mann’s circle 

Some members of Roman aristocracy 

A priest at San Luigi, probably at San Luigi dei Francesi (the rench national church in Rome) 

A Venetian Ambassador (named twice) 

A Secretary of France 

Metastasio, an advocate 

Here, Piranesi has made a mailing list including such diverse names that it reveals that 

Piranesi’s intention for publishing Antichità was to demonstrate the engineering 

magnificence of the past for archaeologists and to inspire new design principles for 

contemporary architects. Piranesi was also establishing himself in an academic career of 

sorts. The Lettere were sent to persons relevant to this purpose. This list continues 

further. 70 It is important to look at the message Piranesi sent by the Lettere as above all 

it indicates consciousness of the importance of Antichità and awareness, as indicated 

especially in the last sentence, of leaving a legacy to posterity: 

pp. 65-66n.176. 

70 For the list given above see the exhibition catalogue, Smith College Museum of Art, Piranesi, 

54

I believe that I have completed a work which will pass on to posterity and which will endure so 

long as there are men curious to know the ruins which remain of the most famous city in the 

universe […] This work is not of the kind which remains in the buried crowded shelves of 

libraries. Its four folio volumes comprise a new system of the monuments of ancient Rome. It 

will be deposited in many public libraries throughout Europe, and in particular in that of the 

Most Christian King. And there is reason to suppose that the name of its author will pass on to 

posterity together with his work […] Is it not a very unpleasant circumstance, then, that having 

invested my thoughts, talents, work, and purse, that having laboured unceasingly for eight years 

to make this work worthy of Your Lordship, I should now be insulted? […] The time has come, 

therefore, to think of saving my honour. Should I be forced to suppress the Dedication, I beg 

your Lordship not to take this as an offense against your forebears, but as a reparation which is 

owed to me. For when the story of my life is written, along with that of other artists, I do not 

want to stand accused of having been a flatterer […] who was held in low esteem even by those 

on whom he lavished his praise. If Your Lordship do not loosen my tongue, if you do not render 

me justice and protect me against calumny […] then I cannot, as a man of honour, or without 

making myself ridiculous, call you a protector of the arts and myself an artist who received your 

protection. And if I have seemed to call you so, in the seventy copies of my work which have 

already been sold, then I must face the painful necessity of having to accuse my own foolishness 

and of trying to vindicate myself before the world. For I must ask you to bear in mind that, as a 

nobleman must consider his ancestors, an artist who will leave his name to posterity must 

consider his own reputation and that of his descendants. A nobleman is the latest of his name, an 

artist the first of his; both must act with equal delicacy. 71 

In 1761 he published Della magnificenza ed architettura de’romani under the 

patronage of Pope Clement XIII. 72 Like the Lettere, Della magnificenza compelled 

Piranesi to produce a defense: this time one addressed to Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694- 

1774) who had criticized Piranesi in his letter published in the Gazette litteraire de 

l’Europe in 1764, on the basis of his Della magnificenza. Della magnificenza is 

Piranesi’s greatest work considering the number of pages containing text (199 pages). It 

has also a drawing part comprising 46 plates. Piranesi explored the origins of Roman 

architecture in this work: in it, he expounded his great argument that Roman 

architecture derived not from the Greek but from Etruscan by indicating the accordance 

between Etruscans’ and Romans’ intellectual, artistic and functional masterpieces in 

architecture (Fig. 3.35). Piranesi further disproved the thesis by Laugier—who used the 

rustic as proof for the evolution from wooden to stone architecture—by offering the 

Tuscan order as the source of Roman Doric. He rejected Le Roy’s arguments by 

drawing a plate (Fig. 3.36): he juxtaposed Le Roy’s engravings, cited the latter’s words, 

and placed under these words the Mouth of Truth which in ancient Rome was believed 

to bite the hand of liars. Piranesi’s plate was headed by the title of Le Roy’s book, Les 

71 See Piranesi, Lettere. Translation of Piranesi’s original words was quoted from Lorenz Eitner, 

Neoclassicism and Romanticism 1750-1850: Sources and Documents (London, 1971), p. 106. 

72 Piranesi, Della magnificenza ed architettura de’romani opera di Gio Battista Piranesi socio 

della reale accademia degli antiquari di Londra (Rome: n.p., 1761). 

55

uines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce: The ruins of the most beautiful 

monuments of Greece. 73 The quotation he included from Le Roy was: “Chapiteau 

ionique: dont on n’a eu jusqu’ici aucune idée et supérieur à plusieurs égards aux plus 

beaux chapiteaux de cet ordre”: Ionic capital: which, one did not have up to now any 

idea is higher in several ways than the most beautiful capitals of this order. After the 

Figure 3.35. View and sectional detail of the Cloaca Maxima, Della magnificenza, 1761 

Figure 3.36. Roman and Greek Ionic capitals, Le Roy’s words (upper inserted frame) and The Mouth of 

Truth (lower inserted frame), Della magnificenza, 1761 

73 Julien-David Le Roy, Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (Paris: H. L. Guerin 

& L. F. Delatour, 1758). 

56

publication of the Della magnificenza, Mariette’s letter reviewing this work appeared in 

the Gazette litteraire de l’Europe, as already mentioned. Mariette was criticizing 

Piranesi, since, according to him, Piranesi ignored and denied the Grecian roots of 

Roman architecture. As a reply to Mariette, Piranesi prepared the Osservazioni sopra la 

lettre de Monsieur Mariette published as bounded with his Parere and Della 

introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti in Europa ne’ tempi antichi in 1765, and 

sentence by sentence responded to Mariette’s letter. 74 It is worth quoting here the 

introduction part of this text. The passage below also reproduces the form of scrupulous 

response Piranesi invented. The marks A, B, etc. indicate the points to which Piranesi 

formed his response. Piranesi is referring to himself in the third person: 

Monsieur Mariette’s Letter 

Observations 

Dear Messieurs, Monsieur Piranesi, the author of a number of works on Roman antiquities that 

have been reviewed in your pages, has recently published another [Della magnificenza], which 

may perhaps be unknown to us, A in which he sets out to write a defense of the Romans and to 

show—contrary to your opinion, which I share—that in the arts, and in architecture in particular, 

not only does that nation owe nothing to the Greeks B but also it is greatly superior to them by 

virtue of the solidity, the size, and the magnificence of the buildings that formerly adorned its 

capital city. 

A 

To Signor Mariette this work is unknown, no perhaps about it. 

B 

To my mind, there is a difference between saying As far as architecture is concerned, the 

Romans owe nothing to the Greeks and saying, as one reads in Piranesi’s preface to the published 

edition of his work, In the matter of architecture, the Romans owed little or nothing to the 

Greeks. Italians understand that the phrase poco o nulla [little or nothing] is intended to belittle 

the nature of the debt incurred by the Romans, not to deny that there was any such debt; anyone 

who has read Piranesi’s book knows whether this is true. On page 93 he demonstrates that Greek 

architecture conferred no advantage, public or private, on Rome, which had long taken its lead 

from Etruscan architecture; and that Greek architecture had been preferred to Etruscan not on 

merit but out of caprice. There is the little or nothing that came to Rome from Greece. 75 

Thus responding in detail to Mariette’s letter, Piranesi went further and prepared a plate 

for the title page of the Osservazioni referring to Mariette’s letter: he quoted a fragment 

74 Piranesi, Osservazioni di Gio Battista Piranesi sopra la lettre de M. Mariette aux auteurs de la 

Gazette Litteraire de l’Europe. Inserita nel Supplemento dell’istessa Gazzetta stampata Dimanche 4 

Novembre MDCCLIV. E Parere su l’Architettura, con una Prefazione ad un nuovo trattato della 

introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti in Europa ne’ tempi antichi (Rome: n.p., 1765). 

75 Piranesi, “Osservazioni sopra la lettre de Monsieur Mariette,” in Observations on the Letter of 

Monsieur Mariette, pp. 87. For the whole text see pp. 87-101. 

57

of Mariette’s words and depicted them being written by Mariette’s hand which was, 

however, bitten off—probably by the Mouth of Truth (Fig. 3.37). 

Figure 3.37. Title page (inserted frame depicts Mariette’s hand), Osservazioni, 1765 

Parere is the other part of this work of 1765. It comprises a dialogue between 

two imaginary characters called Protopiro and Didascalo by Piranesi. While Protopiro 

represents a scholar from the philhellenic environment, Didascalo conveys Piranesi’s 

ideas and new design philosophy. 76 The last section of the volume consists of the Belle 

arti bounded with the Parere and Osservazioni. Like the Della magnificenza, Belle arti 

too, discusses the theme of the Etruscan origins of Roman civilization, but this time by 

including and referring to the progress of European art and architecture. 77 

76 Longer discussion of Parere and conjectures of whom Protopiro and Didascalo represent will 

follow in Chapter 5 below. 

77 For the whole text of Belle arti in Europa see Piranesi, “Della introduzione e del progresso 

delle belle arti in Europa ne’ tempi antichi,” in Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 115- 

24. 

58

Furthermore, Piranesi produced for the volume three series composed of 

drawings of the remains at Albano. One of them, entitled Descrizione e disegno 

dell’emissario del Lago Albano di Gio. Battista Piranesi, was published in 1762; the 

other two series, entitled Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo Descritte ed incise da 

Giovambattista Piranesi and Di due Spelonche Ornate Dagli Antichi alla Riva del Lago 

Albano, were published in 1764. 78 The Albano series bear features as scientific as 

Antichità, and reflect Piranesi’s archaeological sensibility. While the Emissario 

comprises the drawings of drainage outlets to Lake Albano and conveys Piranesi’s 

painstaking labor for the site investigations which resulted in the technical diagrams 

(Fig. 3.38), the Antichità d’Albano contains drawings recalling the Carceri series by 

their etching technique and atmosphere (Fig. 3.39 and 3.40), aside from those again 

representing Piranesi’s technical character of archaeological identity (Fig. 3.41 and 

3.42). The Spelonche, on the other hand, differs from the other two series in that it also 

contains an elaborate text bounded with the drawings (Fig. 3.43). Aside from an 

introductory text that conveys all historically known facts and uses of the lake and 

aqueduct in Piranesi’s time, including quotations and documentation of ancient and 

modern works in footnotes, Piranesi has written detailed explanations for each of eight 

plates out of a numbered total of twelve. But there are more than twelve plates in the 

volume. The plates with commentary comprise technical drawings such as ground 

plans, sections, stylistic and constructional details. Plates IX-XII carry commentary 

inscribed in them, and also comprise technical drawing or depict the structures of the 

site—towns like Albano Laziale; Castel Gandolfo, the pontifical summer residence; and 

aqueduct—in their environmental totality. The rest are ‘close-up shots’ of the inner 

reaches of the aqueduct, presented—naturally—in Carceri-like fashion: dark and grotto- 

like, for they are underground reservoirs. 

While obviously the three series are important especially on account of the 

technical sophistication of their drawings, they equally reverberate Piranesi’s stance on 

architectural history and perhaps a bit of national history: the Lago Albano was held by 

Etruscans, upon which the seer at Delphi pronounced that it would be captured when the 

lake water reached the sea. The 180-meter deep lake, at a height of 293 meters, with a 

78 Piranesi, Descrizione e disegno dell’emissario del Lago Albano di Gio. Battista Piranesi 

(Rome: n.p., 1762); Piranesi, Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo Descritte ed incise da 

Giovambattista Piranesi (Rome: n.p., 1764); Piranesi, Di due Spelonche Ornate Dagli Antichi alla Riva 

del Lago Albano (Rome: n.p., 1764; Paris: n.p., 1836). 

59

surface area of 5 km 2 is said thus to have acquired an aqueduct in 398-397 BC. Piranesi 

was perhaps investigating an Etruscan site. Piranesi summarized the characteristics of 

these three disciplines—archaeology, architecture and history—by giving a snapshot 

view by the drawings of these three series. 

Figure 3.38. Dimostrazioni dell’ Emissario del Lago Albano, Emissario, 1762 

Figure 3.39. Veduta laterale dello stesso Sepolcro, Antichità d’Albano, 1764 

60

Figure 3.40. Prospettiva della scala della stessa conserva d’acqua, Antichità d’Albano, 1764 

Figure 3.41. Ordine Toscano del Tampio di Giove Laziale, Antichità d’Albano, 1764 

61

Figure 3.42. Disegno degli avanzi d’un’antica piscina e delle conserve dell’acqua della medesima, 

piantate su le rovine d’Alba Lunga, or sopra Castel Gandolfo di là dal Convento de’ PP. 

Riformati di San Francesco, Antichità d’Albano, 1764 

Figure 3.43. Dimostrazione in grande del criptoportico accennato nella tav. 9 con la lettera C, 

Spelonche, 1764 

62

Piranesi’s architectural projects—and the process of their execution or non- 

execution—were important for his career. In 1764, Piranesi was appointed by the Grand 

Prior Giambattista Rezzonico, Pope Clement XIII’s then 23-year-old nephew, to design 

two major architectural projects: 79 the reconstruction of Santa Maria del Priorato on the 

Aventine hill, and a new tribune for the west end of San Giovanni in Laterano (St John 

Lateran). The operation in Laterano was to complete the program of renovation begun 

in the 1640s by Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) on the nave. The Laterano project 

had continued into the eighteenth century with work on the façade done by Gaetano 

Galilei (1691-1737) who had redesigned the façade of the Laterano in 1719. 80 Finally, 

Piranesi was appointed to work on the west end design of the Laterano, after Galilei. 

Piranesi designed and drew the architectural project for the said part of the building. 

Fig. 3.44 depicts the longitudinal section of the apse of the Laterano. Nevertheless, the 

work could never be realized because of lack of funds. 

Figure 3.44. Preliminary study for a longitudinal section from the apse of San Giovanni in Laterano, Plate 

III, 1765 

79 For information about Piranesi’s assignment to two architectural projects see Ficacci’s 

introduction “The Discovery of Rome out of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, p. 35. 

80 For Galilei’s design in Laterano see James Stevens Curl, “Galilei,” A Dictionary of 

Architecture, 1999 ed. 

63

Priorato belonged to the Priory of the Knights of Malta. 81 The project was 

assigned to Piranesi in 1764, construction started in 1765 on the site of the older church 

of the Priory, and was completed in 1766. The reconstruction process of the Priorato 

primarily consisted of a new entrance screen and an interior ceremonial piazza. 82 

Moreover, because Priorato and Laterano were designed almost at the same time, when 

he was designing Priorato, he may have also been influenced by Borromini’s design in 

Laterano. 83 Piranesi’s conception provides integration of the building with the site. 84 

The altar also includes the sculpture of The Apotheosis of St Basil of Cappadocia (Fig. 

3.45). The basic form of the altarpiece is a sphere mounted upon a richly elaborated 

Figure 3.45. Sketch study for the altar of The Apotheosis of St Basil of Cappadocia in Santa Maria del 

Priorato 

81 The first church had been built in 939 as a Benedictine monastery, when the Marquis of 

Camerino, Alberico II (?-955), donated his palace to St Odo of Cluny. In the plan of Santa Maria del 

Priorato, there may be inspirations from the Benedictine Monastery of St Gall, which was constructed in 

820, in Switzerland. Because of that the plan of St Gall is similar to some of the later churches (St Gall 

still survives and reflects the sophisticated architectural conception of the Benedictines). After the 

Benedictines, the church passed to the Templars in the mid-twelfth century, and to the Knights of Malta 

in the fifteenth century. It belonged to an important Cluniac foundation between the tenth and twelfth 

centuries. See Henry J. A. Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 

1994), pp. 171, 250, 275; Curl, “Benedictine,” A Dictionary of Architecture, 1999 ed. 

82 In this piazza, an ancient ceremony takes place annually: the weapons and equipment of the 

Roman army were ritually purified at the close of the summer campaign. See Sire, The Knights of Malta, 

p. 275. 

83 For Wilton-Ely’s interpretation of Borrominian influence in Piranesi’s Priorato see Wilton- 

Ely, Mind and Art, p. 97. 

Labyrinth, p. 48. 

84 Tafuri also observes the continuity between Priorato’s and the piazza’s design in Sphere and 

64

pedestal topped by the spectral appearance of the main figure—in this case Saint Basil. 

Heinrich Brauer argues that Piranesi’s Priorato altarpiece derives from drawings he had 

done starting some twenty years before for a triumphal monument. 85 The three drawings 

date to 1745-1753 and are in Berlin’s Kunstbibliothek (Fig. 3.46, 3.47, and 3.48). One 

recognizes in Fig. 3.45 also the form which occupied Piranesi as he worked on the 

cammini (chimneys) that were going to be published in 1769 in the Diverse maniere. In 

fact, Brauer points out that the sheet containing the drawings in Fig. 3.46, 3.47 and 3.48 

also contains a chimney sketch. 86 We can extend the conjunction to draw an analogy 

between the cammini of Diverse maniere and the façade of the wall in Priorato’s piazza 

(Fig. 3.49 and 3.50). 

Figure 3.46. Fides (faith, the goddess of loyalty) 

85 Heinrich Brauer, “Gio. Batt. Piranesi verwirklicht einen Traum: Eine Zeichnung zum St. 

Basilius-Altar in Sta. Maria del Priorato,” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae zu Ehren von Leo Bruhns, 

Franz Graf Wolff Matternich, Ludwig Schudt (Munich: Verlag Anton Schroll, 1961), p. 474. 

86 Brauer, “Gio. Batt. Piranesi verwirklicht einen Traum,” p. 477. 

65

Figure 3.47. Religion Figure 3.48. Fides (faith, the goddess of 

loyalty) 

Figure 3.49. Preliminary design for the screen wall of Priorato’s piazza (framed part refers to the 

chimneypiece from the Diverse maniere) 

66

Figure 3.50. Plate 34, Diverse maniere, 1769 

Most Piranesi critics maintain that Priorato’s importance for Piranesi is that it is the 

only large architectural project of his that was executed (Fig. 3.51). 87 The construction 

process of Priorato is extremely well documented; we even still have the foreman’s 

account book. 88 Because of Piranesi’s successful design in the Priorato, Pope Clement 

XIII endowed him with Sperone d’Oro (Golden Spur). 

87 Brauer, however, maintains that Piranesi early on deliberately withdrew from pursuit of 

architectural practice: “Gio. Batt. Piranesi verwirklicht einen Traum,” p. 474. 

88 Piranesi’s manuscript account book recording construction costs for Piranesi’s redesign of the 

church of Santa Maria del Priorato is in the art and architecture collections of the Avery Fisher 

Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University. 

67

Figure 3.51. View from the entrance façade of the Santa Maria del Priorato, Rome, 1764-66 

When they mention Piranesi’s architectural designs, Piranesi scholars also speak 

of Piranesi’s probable design for Cardinal Alessandro Albani’s villa, as one of the 

important places in Rome of Piranesi’s day. It is situated on the Via Salaria and was 

designed by Carlo Marchionni (1702-1786) around 1760 with philhellenic design 

intention (Fig. 3.52). It was to reflect the principles of Greek temples. Villa Albani was 

famous for its ceiling representing Parnassus painted by Anton Raphael Mengs. 

Piranesi’s contribution to the design of Villa Albani is mentioned in works on 

Piranesi. 89 However, we do not know the extent of his contribution to the actualized 

design. 

89 Piranesi’s contribution to the design of Villa Albani is mentioned in Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as 

Architect and Designer, pp. 37-38. Also see Rykwert, First Moderns, pp. 342-55; Lesley Lawrence, 

Connoisseurs and Secret Agents in 18th Century Rome (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961). 

68

Figure 3.52. Carlo Marchionni, Tempietto Greco, Villa Albani, Rome, 1760 

In 1765, Piranesi was invited to the archaeological excavations operated by the 

English merchant Thomas Jenkins in Chiusi and Corneto: he participated in the 

investigations in Corneto with his friend James Byres and examined the Etruscan tombs 

there. In 1778, he drew the Doric temples at Paestum in Naples, 90 and they were 

published posthumously by his son Francesco as a series under the title of the Varie 

Vedute di Paestum. 91 The Paestum series may also have been prepared by the help of 

documents collected when Piranesi journeyed south to Naples, before returning to 

Venice in 1744. Apart from comprising his last drawings, the importance of the 

Paestum series also owes to the fact that, by these drawings, Piranesi for a last time 

demonstrated his views on the origins of architecture. 

In his last years Piranesi worked more on interior space than on vedute. His 

Diverse maniere contains chimneypiece designs some of which were executed while 

others remained as drawings. Their styles bring together elements of Etruscan and 

Egyptian ornamentation. The plates in the Diverse maniere did not, however, become 

popular when they were produced: the work was sold at the low price of about sixty 

90 Lang, S., “The Early Publications of the Temples at Paestum,” Journal of the Warburg and 

Courtauld Institutes 13: 1/2 (1950): 48-64. 

91 Piranesi, Differentes vues de quelques restes de trois grands édifices qui subsistent encore 

dans le milieu de l’Ancienne Ville de Pesto, autrement Possidonia, etc. [Varie Vedute di Paestum] (Rome: 

n.p., 1778; Paris: n.p., 1836). 

69

New Turkish Liras. 92 The references to Egypt can also be found in his painted scheme 

of the Caffé degli Inglesi in Piazza di Spagna. The project of the Caffé was executed 

probably during the early 1760s. There are two plates, published in the Diverse 

maniere, demonstrating his design for the Caffé, for its short and long walls (Fig. 3.53 

and 3.54). Interpretations of the design of the Caffé came already in Piranesi’s day. One 

of them was from the young Welsh painter Thomas Jones in 1776: “[the Caffé was] a 

filthy vaulted room the walls of which were painted with sphinxes, obelisks and 

pyramids from capricious designs of Piranesi, and fitter to adorn the inside of an 

Egyptian sepulcher, than a room of social conversation.” 93 

Figure 3.53. Painted scheme in the Egyptian taste for the Caffé degli Inglesi, Rome (shorter wall), 

Diverse maniere, 1769 (executed in 1760) 

92 About the eighteenth-century price of the Diverse maniere see Hofer, “Piranesi as Book 

Illustrator,” Piranesi, pp. 86-87. 

93 Brinsley Ford, ed., “The Memoirs of Thomas Jones,” Walpole Society 32 (1946-48): 54. 

70

Figure 3.54. Painted scheme in the Egyptian taste for the Caffé degli Inglesi, Rome (longer wall), 

Diverse maniere, 1769 (executed in 1760) 

With help from the antiquarian and dealer Gavin Hamilton, sculptors Nolleken, 

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and Pietro Malatesta, Piranesi was following the recent 

excavations (at the end of the 1770s) conducted in the Pantanelo area of Hadrian’s Villa 

in Tivoli. Benefiting from the findings of antiquity obtained in these excavations, 

Piranesi designed individual compositions and gathered the plates in his publication of 

Vasi in 1778. Some of the most elaborate designs from the Vasi are the funerary 

monument of Augustus Urbanus with boar’s head rhyton 94 (Fig. 3.55), the Newdigate 

Candelabrum (Fig. 3.56), and the Warwick Vase (Fig. 3.57). 

94 “Funerary monument of Augustus Urbanus with boar’s head rhyton” was sold by Francesco 

Piranesi to Gustav III of Sweden in 1785 with some other pieces from his father’s archive: A. Geffroy, 

“Essai sur la formation des collections d’antiques de la Suède,” Revue Archéologique XXX (1896); Ernst 

Kjellberg, “Piranesis antiksamling i Nationalmuseum,” Nationalmusei Årsbock, Stockholm 2 (1920): 

156-69. 

71

Figure 3.55. Funerary monument of Augustus Urbanus with boar’s head rhyton, Vasi, 1778 

Figure 3.56. Drawing for Newdigate candelabrum, Vasi, 1778 

72

Figure 3.57. The Warwick Vase, Vasi, 1778 

Piranesi suffered from a bladder complaint and died in Rome on 9 November 

1778. After his death the family moved their business to Paris. 95 Piranesi’s children 

Laura and Pietro had been trained to continue their father’s business. 96 Francesco also 

continued to etch and tried to maintain his father’s style. 97 Although Laura was known 

little, she published a series of reduced versions of her father’s plates. Later Pietro 

published some plates by his father in Rome during the 1800s. He also published a 

series with his brother Francesco. 98 As may be gathered from his works, the most active 

of Piranesi’s children was Francesco. He studied architecture in Paris, in the branch of 

landscape drawings and etching techniques. None of Piranesi’s children could achieve 

to obtain more success and popularity than their father had. 

95 For information about his family’s move to Paris see Murray, Piranesi and the Grandeur of 

Ancient Rome, p. 7; Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 119, 125n.3. 

96 Duchesne, Quelques es sur l’Etablissement des Frères Piranesi. 

97 Francesco Piranesi, A Plan of Pompei, Engraved by F. Piranesi in 1785, accompanied by three 

views of Pompeii after Louis Jean Desprez and a View of Villa Medici, Engraved by F. Piranesi, and Two 

Engravings after Mural Paintings in Pompeii, by G. Carattoni (Paris: n.p., 1836); Francesco Piranesi, 

Pianta delle Fabriche Esistenti nella Villa Adriana. F. Piranesi (Rome, 1781); Francesco Piranesi, 

Raccolta de’Tempj Antichi. Prima Parte Che Comprende i Tempj di Vesta Madre, Ossia della Terra, e 

della Sibilla e dell’Onore e della (Rome, 1780). 

98 Francesco Piranesi and Pietro Piranesi, Antiquités d’Herculanum, Gravées par Th. Piroli, et 

Publiées par F. et P. Piranesi (Paris, 1804-06). 

73

CHAPTER 4 

WHY IS PIRANESI MISINTERPRETED: FLETCHER’S 

TREE OF ARCHITECTURE 

4.1. ‘Excessive’ and ‘Eclectic’ or Architectural History of 

Archaeology? 

Regardless of whether it serves to dismiss the architect as an aberration or to 

commend him as immensely creative, one of the qualities on which the evaluation of 

Piranesi’s work is based is his “excessiveness” which is found at once to yield 

“hermeticism” and “barbarism.” While Tafuri finds that Piranesi’s stylistic excesses 

“end up with a kind of typological negation, an ‘architectural banquet of nausea’, a 

semantic void created by an excess of visual,” 1 Adolf K. Placzek displays a more 

controlled appraisal. The title of his article signifies his embracing attitude: “The 

(Classical, Baroque, Rocco, Romantic, Modern) Vision of Piranesi.” 2 Placzek accepts 

that Piranesian design represents a break with tradition which he expresses through a 

quotation from Vincent Scully: according to Scully, Piranesi’s design represents “the 

end of the old, humanist, man-centered world with its fixed values—and the beginning 

of the mass age of modern history, with its huge environments and rushing 

continuities.” 3 True, but even though both Scully and Placzek share the impression with 

many others, the implicit explanation of Piranesian design as ‘eclectic’, the substitution 

of ‘eclecticism’ for ‘excessiveness’, does equally little to elucidate what Piranesi was 

after. 4 Piranesi’s design system depended on going back in history up to the first canons 

and utilizing their archetypes and representing all interim historic stages of design 

1 Tafuri, Sphere and Labyrinth, p. 35. 

2 Placzek, “The (Classical, Baroque, Rocco, Romantic, Modern) Vision of Piranesi,” pp. 27-33. 

3 Vincent Scully, quoted by Placzek, “The (Classical, Baroque, Rocco, Romantic, Modern) 

Vision of Piranesi,”p. 27. 

4 Bloomer, Murray and Karl Lehmann are among those who evaluate Piranesi’s design approach 

as ‘eclectic’: Bloomer, Architecture and the Text, pp. 67-80; Murray, Piranesi and the Grandeur of 

Ancient Rome, pp. 53-59; Karl Lehmann, “Piranesi as Interpreter of Roman Architecture,” in Smith 

College Museum of Art’s exhibition catalogue, Piranesi, pp. 88-93. 

74

egardless of whether the project concerned church, chimney, or prison (Fig. 3.51, 4.1 

and 4.2). 

Figure 4.1. Chimneypiece in Egyptian manner, Plate XXIV, Diverse maniere, 1769 

Figure 4.2. Plate XIV, Invenzioni capricci di carceri, 1745 

“I find it a difficult and melancholy business,” wrote Goethe in 1786 in Rome, 

“separating the old Rome from the new.” 5 As Leonard Barkan pointed out, “With the 

exception of a very brief period, the history of Rome is a history of the idea of a city 

5 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (1962; 

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 133. 

75

that used to be.” 6 For Piranesi the problem resided in more than a dualism of old and 

new. It was much more stratified. 

He sought for a way of transposing or transliterating Goethe’s 

recognition/problem into architectural drawing in both vectors of drawing: in the more 

‘technical’ one comprising ground plan, section, etc. and in the veduta kind. For the 

former, he devised the means whereby he inserted letters of the alphabet at the relevant 

parts of a building’s structural or other component. The letters referred to extended 

captions that could be included in the plate or extend outside (Fig. 4.3). 7 His drawings 

of the latter earned him the epithets of ‘eclecticism’ and ‘excessiveness’. While virtually 

all Piranesi drawings may be classified in this manner, the Cestius Pyramid (Fig. 5.12) 

Figure 4.3. Pianta della forma del Castro di Tiberio, ecc., Antichità, I, 1756 

6 Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of 

Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 20. 

7 Figures 3.21, 3.29, 3.30, 3.42 examples of this practice. 

76

is a particularly explicit example to which we shall return in Chapter 5. 8 In brief, while a 

drawing of the kind depicted in Fig. 4.3 represents the historicity of architecture 

vertically, a veduta depicts it experientially and ontologically. 

Indeed, one may object that it was not a drawing like that of the Cestius Pyramid 

(Fig. 5.12) that earned Piranesi the cited epithets, for these he was not designing, only 

rendering what was present in his environment. But his designs, which did earn him the 

epithets, follow the same principle. Rykwert’s evaluation of Piranesian complexity in 

the passage below is meant to be negative, but implicitly points at the presence, in 

Piranesi, of a vision of architectural history as, on the one hand, archaeological fragment 

and, on the other, as of a presence that requires acknowledgement of all historical 

layering: 

Piranesi’s use of the frieze in the Osservazioni compositions, his obsessional concern with basrelief, 

again echoes the authenticity of the antique fragment torn from the vast corpse of the past 

and embedded in an imitatively articulated scaled-down present. By playing on it continuously, 

he exaggerates the contrast which Winckelmann, too, must have felt sharply in the Villa Albani 

and to which I have already alluded in describing the setting of the frieze over the door of the 

central salone of the villa. 9 

As we are going to see later, Piranesi had a view of European architectural history and 

especially its roots that radically differed from the approach that was going to gain 

momentum as the eighteenth century wore on. The view of Western architectural 

history that was gaining ground was Hellenism, with Winckelmann one of its major 

spokesmen. Regardless of whether this correctly reflected the styles of Greek Antiquity, 

the Greek Revival was associated with restraint and purity. 10 Illustrated at Fig. 4.7 

below is the Parte di ampio magnifico porto (Part of a spacious and magnificent harbor, 

1750) to which we shall return as a conclusive illustration representing Piranesi’s vision 

of architectural history. The Porto bears all elements which, Piranesi found, went into 

the making of that history. “Most bizarre of all,” finds Penny of this drawing, “is the 

8 See p. 107. 

9 Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 370. 

10 Wilton-Ely attributes the cancellation of Piranesi’s San Giovanni in Laterano project to the 

rising taste for ‘Greek restraint’, which, he claims “found the language of Piranesi’s design extravagant 

and highly idiosyncratic.” See Wilton-Ely’s Introduction to his edition of Piranesi’s Observations on the 

Letter of Monsieur Mariette, p. 16. For an opposite view that ascribes such cancellations in Piranesi’s 

career to the cost factor, see Joseph Connors, “Il libro dei conti della Avery Architectural library della 

Columbia University,” Piranesi e l’Aventino, ed. Barbara Jatta, exhibition catalogue, Santa Maria del 

Priorato, Rome, 16 September-8 December 1998 (Milan: Electa, 1998), pp. 86-94. 

77

foreground pier with its massive trophy jammed into the corbelled ledge, which 

supports the truncated pyramid, and the fluted shaft capped by the urn and flag. Such 

concoctions look forward to Piranesi’s later experiments with brutal combinations of 

disparate ornamental elements.” 11 What Penny finds “brutal” was (is) an inseparable, 

fundamental element of not only Rome, but of all Italy, perhaps of all Mediterranean. 

For Piranesi, “the truncated pyramid” was part of the Roman past—concretely. After 

Egypt had become part of the Roman Empire in 31 BC, its rich culture elicited interest, 

affecting not only architecture, but also motivating “a steady stream” into Rome, in 

Wittkower’s words, of “portable objects.” 12 The “portable objects” included obelisks, 

for instance. Thirteenth-century Rome underwent yet another period of lively interest in 

Egypt: “Sphinxes turned up in stylistically remarkably correct adaptations,” writes 

Wittkower, “and, for the first time, pyramids were incorporated in Christian tomb 

monuments.” 13 There was yet another period of revival of interest in Egypt starting with 

the Renaissance. But this one proved a permanent influence; for, it came not only as 

decorative trend but along with philological and philosophical study and investigation 

of the hieroglyph. One quite known example of this is the Contarini tomb designed by 

Sanmichele in 1544-1548 in the church Il Santo in Padua. Egyptian material became the 

moving force behind Renaissance Florentine Neo-Platonism. Wittkower maintains that, 

starting with the Renaissance, Egyptian presence in European, especially Italian art 

proved permanent. 14 

Wittkower’s account of Egyptian presence in European architecture from 31 BC, 

when Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, through the eighteenth century remains 

the most comprehensive account. As he himself points out, the topic is very 

understudied. 15 This lack may be attributed to those very reasons by which Piranesi is 

relegated to a domain of ‘unclassifiable eclecticism’, whose final explanation will be 

taken up in the second part of the present chapter. Thus, continuing to follow 

Wittkower, we may cite one eighteenth-century work that makes up the predecessor of 

11 Penny, Piranesi, p. 10. 

12 Wittkower, “Piranesi and Eighteenth Century Egyptomania,” p. 260. 


14 Wittkower, “Piranesi and Eighteenth Century Egyptomania,” pp. 260-63. 


78

Piranesi’s work that has made it appear eclectic at best and comprise “brutal 

combinations of disparate ornamental elements” at nearly worst. 

Fischer von Erlach’s 1721 Entwurf einer historischen Architektur, 16 which has 

been mentioned before and which, Wittkower maintains, Piranesi studied around 

1743, 17 was “the first to approach the stylistic phenomenon of Egyptian art and 

architecture as unbroken continuity from Archaic Egypt to modern times.” 18 Fischer 

von Erlach had never been to Egypt. He used travelers’ books. His drawings, unlike 

Piranesi’s, were generic and stylized—“foggy,” in Wittkower’s words (Fig. 4.4). 19 

Piranesi made two sketches after Fischer von Erlach’s plates, both of which are in the 

Pierpont Morgan Library today (Fig. 4.5). 20 But, says Wittkower, Piranesi’s serious 

considerations concerning Egyptian architecture start in 1756, with the Antichità. 21 And, 

persuasing the Egyptian motif, Piranesi arrives at his most radical point: in the Parere 

of 1765, claims Wittkower, “All the rules are cast to the wind.” 22 

Figure 4.4. Fischer von Erlach, plate showing tombs at Heliopolis, Entwurf einer historischen 

Architektur, 1721 

16 Fischer von Erlach, Entwurf einer historischen Architektur (Vienna, 1721). 




20 The archive number is 1966.11:17. 

21 A year later, in 1757, F. L. Norden was going to publish the architectural Travels in Egypt and 

Nubia. Cited by Wittkower, “Piranesi and Eighteenth Century Egyptomania,” p. 264. 


79

Figure 4.5. Sheet of sketches after Fischer von Erlach’s Entwurf einer historischen Architektur 

Piranesi would indeed appear as ‘casting all the rules to the wind’ if we view the 

Parere from a post-Winckelmannian perspective of architectural history or from the 

perspective of mid-century Parisian Neo-Classicism or from the perspective of a Britain 

which, around 1750, privileged a classicism that was oriented toward the revival of 

Renaissance Italian architects’ interpretation of Antiquity. For Piranesi himself, these 

perspectives were part of an architectural history that would serve as material for future 

archaeologists. Or, they interested him with reference to empirical and design-and- 

construction approach characteristics they were able to uncover about the past. As 

dictating the rule for design projects in the present, however, he cast them aside as 

“mimetic”—a Piranesian critique we shall look at in Chapter 5. 

80

Oechslin claimed in 1976 that Piranesi changed architectural experience and 

assigned it to a simple, fundamental factor: his interest in archaeology. 23 Piranesi was 

not simply an architect with an interest in architectural history, but one with an 

engagement with the historiography of archaeology itself. 24 Oechslin’s designation 

perhaps comes closest to grasping Piranesi’s stance and particular interests that have led 

the most prominent architectural historians of our day to incomprehension. The error 

resides in attempting to read Piranesian drawing as purely architectural design. One 

must admit that when approached thusly, Piranesi does not only appear ‘eclectic’ or 

‘excessive’, but, on occasion, even kitchy. Today, we assign Winckelmann the stature 

of the ‘first modern archaeologist’. 25 But we do so because his view of the European 

history of art and architecture as deriving from radical Greek origins eventually came to 

dominate a (western) world that was going to draw a very precise geographic line of 

where West began and the geo-politico-spatial line thus drawn was equally going to 

determine the space within which the archaeologically determined beginnings of 

Western architecture could be investigated. This line excluded Egypt. 

Thus the problem in interpreting Piranesi is two-fold: his view of the 

conjunction of architectural history and archaeology that demanded investigation fell 

outside the geo-political boundaries that were consolidated by the nineteenth century. 

His drawings were more architectural historiography than design. This, however, is not 

to say that he did not have a proposal or even program for how to design in his day. But 

he called for a design that laid bare its—the West’s—historical roots in as much studied 

detail as possible. Contrary to the mostly Anglo-American critics we have cited above, 

there are architectural continental historians in addition to Oechslin, who have long held 

Piranesi to be perhaps the best interpreter of ancient Rome. 26 We may, of course, add 

Wittkower to this list of continental historians as he ultimately acknowledges that 

1764). 

23 Oechslin, “L’intérêt archéologique,” pp. 395-418. 


25 Winckelmann, Sendschreiben von den herculanischen Entdeckungen (Dresden: Walter, 1762; 

26 An example is Lehmann, “Piranesi as Interpreter of Roman Architecture,” in the exhibition 

catalogue Piranesi, pp. 88ff. See also particularly the Introduction to Giulio Cressedi, ed., Un 

Manoscritto Derivato dalle ‘ ’ del Piranesi: Vaticano Latino 8091 (Rome: Fratelli Palombi 

Editori, 1975), where it is argued, as in this thesis, that Piranesi as archaeologist has been seriously 

neglected. We may add, as work done to compensate this neglect, Wilton-Ely’s “Piranesian Symbols on 

the Aventine,” Apollo 103 (March 1976): 214-27. 

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Piranesi worked with the eighteenth-century anthologist’s all-inclusive perspective, 

much in the manner of the French Encyclopedists. 27 

The polemical debates in which Piranesi was caught up throughout his lifetime 

were being generated at the very historical moment that not only codified architectural 

Neo-Classicism, but also generated architectural history as a history of styles. The 

debate mounted as one discovered and further excavated Herculaneum, Paestum, 

Spalato, and Greece. When Piranesi was born, there was yet no archaeology proper. 

There were antiquarians and connoisseurs, who were interested in old artefacts, 

writings, objects, and eventually, sites. They were collectors and amateurs who wrote 

on their findings. But they contributed to the formation of museums. 28 With Oechslin, 

one is compelled to claim that Piranesi was the first modern archaeologist. So, we must 

ask whether, aside from the modern-day separation of the disciplines of architecture and 

archaeology, is Piranesi misinterpreted? 

4.2. “The Tree of Architecture” 

Sir Banister Fletcher’s work entitled A History of Architecture was first 

published in 1896. It has gone through numerous editions and is still studied widely in 

the Anglo-American world as a standard text book on the history of architecture. 29 

When the enlarged twentieth version was published as its centennial edition in 1996, 

The American Institute of Architects declared it the Book of the Century. 30 Its 

translations have similarly attained wide circulation outside the Anglo-American 

world. 31 One reason for the wide recognition the work has attained is emphasized in its 

subtitle. This subtitle expresses the comprehensiveness of the book: “The comparative 


28 Hofer, “Piranesi as Book Illustrator,” p. 87. 

29 For discussion of Fletcher’s work, see Esra Akcan, “Küresel Ça da Ele tirellik: ‘Öteki’ 

Co rafyalar Sorunsalı,” Arredamento Mimarlık (March 2002): 81n.29; Gülsüm Baydar Nalbanto lu, 

“The Cultural Burden of Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 57: 4 (2004): 22-23. 

30 On the election of Fletcher’s work as the Book of the Century see Peter Davey, “Sir Banister 

Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, Twentieth and Centennial Edition,” The Architectural Review 

(December 1996): 96-97. 

31 For information about translations of A History of Architecture, see Gülsüm Nalbanto lu, 

“Toward Postcolonial Openings: Rereading Sir Banister Fletcher’s History of architecture,” Assemblage 

35 (April 1998): 13-15. 

82

method.” Fletcher’s book was “comparative” as it not only discussed the history of 

western architecture by following the itinerary Winckelmann had drawn for it, but also 

took up other, non-western traditions. This widely influential work had the power to 

represent the perception of architectural history of an entire western culture, including 

its view of other cultures’ architecture. Its manner, or rather its system of incorporating 

the other traditions, indicates yet another reason behind the perception of Piranesi as an 

‘un-scientific’ ‘idiosyncratic’ figure, ‘frenetic’ on account of his Egyptomanie, and even 

as a ‘madman’. It was obviously not possible for Fletcher not to mention Piranesi when 

writing a History of Architecture. The tendency of the western historiographic approach 

to catalogue everything, which is a tendency that began in the eighteenth century, would 

render it impossible not to mention at all this architect who produced a tremendous 

amount. (The irony is, of course, that Piranesi was one of the inventors of this method 

of comprehensive cataloguing.) Piranesi’s productivity made this exclusion impossible. 

Nonetheless, when Piranesi was included in Fletcher’s history, he was presented as 

posing an oddity in the rational progress of Western Architectural History. 

Fletcher’s statements about the ‘non western’ architectures were west-centric, 

and colonialist. He positioned his organizing center in order to exclude other traditions 

even as he included them. 32 Fletcher himself prepared and enlarged the new editions of 

his book until his death. R. A. Cordingley, the editor of the first posthumous edition of 

the work, revised the book and attempted to erase traces of west-centrism: to the fourth 

edition of 1901 Fletcher had introduced the titles of “Historical” and “Non-Historical” 

architectures. Under the heading of “Historical” architectures, Fletcher had discussed 

Western architecture. The non-Western, he had taken up under the heading of “Non- 

Historical.” Cordingley changed these titles and erased the illustration of the tree that 

gave a snap-shot view of the history of architecture. 33 Fletcher’s expressions 

emphasizing the division between Eastern and Western architectures are absent from the 

centennial 1996 edition. In time, editors identified the “Historical” with the West and 

this part of the book was re-titled “Ancient Architecture and the Western Succession.” 

The part on the “Non-Historical” styles was re-titled “Architecture in the East.” Each 

32 For information on the traditions excluded from the History of Architecture see Davey, “Sir 

Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture,” pp. 96-97; Nalbanto lu, “Toward Postcolonial Openings,” 

pp. 13, 15; and Akcan, “Küresel Ça da Ele tirellik,” p. 74. 

33 For Fletcher’s addition, see the 1901 edition of A History of Architecture: On the Comparative 

Method. On Fletcher’s addition, also see Akcan, “Küresel Ça da Ele tirellik,” p. 81n.29. 

83

editor updated the book, added some parts and tried to erase the colonialistic terms and 

implications. But regardless of whether it was named ‘Eastern’ or “Non-Historical,” the 

characteristic of this architecture was a lack of change and development, stagnancy, 

ancientness and the character of being limited to a certain restricted geography. While 

the “Historical” western group was shown to be progressing and generating names of 

historical periods and styles—such as Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, 

etc.—the architectures belonging to the “Non-Historical,” non-western group were 

entitled by geographical names—Egypt, Near East, Russia, China, Africa, and so on. 

This feature may still be seen in the edition of 1996. The editors’ efforts were not 

enough to erase Fletcher’s primary hypotheses in the composition of the book. Starting 

with the first edition, and included in it until 1961 (including the 1961 edition), was the 

figure of “The Tree of Architecture” (Fig. 4.6) that demonstrated the position of world 

architectures in relation to their relative situation in the History of Architecture. Though 

removed from the book, the tree continues to shape not only Fletcher’s book but also a 

conception of architectural history that has been preserved in Wilton-Ely and Tafuri and 

Nicholas Penny, as evinced in their evaluations of Piranesi. 

It is necessary to examine Fletcher’s tree illustration closely. Its immediately 

outstanding characteristic is that it naturalizes the proposed conception of history by 

representing it by a figure taken from nature: the tree represents architecture. The Muses 

of disciplines adjacent to architecture are lined up around the base and trunk of the 

tree—Geography, Geology, Climate, Religion, Social and History. Climate and 

Religion are directly supporting the trunk. Making up the foundation and soil upon 

which The Tree of Architecture rises, the Muses also generate a mythic domain. 

Immediately above the Muses, in the part deriving from their classical iconography and 

adjacent to the mythical domain, Peruvian, Mexican and Egyptian architectures are 

placed to the left of the trunk from the reader’s perspective. Assyrian, Indian and 

Chinese & Japanese architectures assume their place to the right of the trunk. When 

their distance to Greek architecture, which forms the first element inscribed on the trunk 

further up, is considered, it is seen that these six alien architectures are closer to the 

domain of myth represented by the Muses’ sprawl than to Greek architecture. Piranesi’s 

Egypt is located in this group. Egypt is closer to the trunk than Mexican, Peruvian, 

Indian and Chinese & Japanese architectures. Nevertheless, since Egypt is placed in 

84

Figure 4.6. Fletcher, “The Tree of Architecture” 

85

symmetry with the Assyrian, we realize that the reason of this short distance between 

Egypt and the trunk is geographical proximity rather than historical interaction. Egypt 

does not belong to Fletcher’s “Historical” group. The Historical Western Architecture 

progressing without any interruption begins with the Greek and continues with the 

Roman; and the trunk, the History of Architecture itself, is crowned by American 

architecture. On the other hand, Egypt has been placed with the “Non-Historical” group 

because it did not evolve and contribute to the Western History of Architecture. 

We can classify Fletcher’s evaluation of Piranesi under three headings: 

“fascination” with Egypt; the fact that Piranesi gives priority to Rome instead of 

Greece; and his passion of the Roman on the order of a “megalomaniac”: “The 

megalomaniac vision of the Roman architecture,” wrote Fletcher, “expressed in 

Piranesi’s engravings of ancient buildings and his ‘carceri’ series, was an enormously 

influential counterweight to Rococo frivolity.” 34 “Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), 

best known for his dramatic architectural etchings and for championing the Roman 

architecture at the expense of Greek, produced at Santa Maria del Priorato, Rome, his 

most important essay in built architecture […] The obelisks punctuating the piazza 

reflect Piranesi’s fascination with ancient Egypt.” 35 Apart from considering that 

Fletcher’s evaluation of Piranesi includes him (i.e., Fletcher) among those who found 

Piranesi ‘idiosyncratic’, we can also think that Fletcher is the writer who determined the 

reception of Piranesi in modern times. Fletcher and most architectural historians have 

found Piranesi unclassifiable. Piranesi is indeed unclassifiable in terms of Fletcher’s 

classification of architectures. 

Piranesi’s view of the Orient was, however, clearer than the nebulous 

descriptions of his work would warrant. In order to comprehend it, we may examine his 

representation of the Venice harbor, which is accepted as one of Piranesi’s most creative 

and richest designs: 36 in Parte di ampio magnifico porto published in the series of 

Opere varie (Fig. 4.7), Piranesi managed to create a design system that is defined 

distinctly as ‘Piranesian’. It is a style that juxtaposes elements derived from Antiquity 

with Archaic figures and archetypes derived from Egyptian and Etruscan repertoires. In 

the Porto, the richness, diversity and creative power of the imagination in the forms 

Designer, p. 19. 

34 Fletcher, A History of Architecture, p. 846. 

35 Fletcher, A History of Architecture, p. 919. 

36 For a discussion of Piranesi’s drawing of the harbor, see Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and 

86

Figure 4.7. Parte di ampio magnifico porto, Opere varie, 1750 

composing an effective architectural fantasy were all invented by Piranesi. This new 

system of composition was defined later by Piranesi himself in the following words in 

“An Apologetical Essay in Defense of the Egyptian and Tuscan Architecture” prefacing 

the Diverse maniere: “Art, seeking after new inventions, borrowed […] from nature 

ornaments, changing and adapting them as necessity required” (Diverse maniere, 12). 

As in the Renaissance, in the eighteenth century still, ‘nature’ was a wide category that 

included architectural layers of the past as well as new inventions that somehow leaned 

on the past but also explored and innovated. Piranesi thus explained not only the sources 

of his architectural inventions, but also his notion of how the history of architecture 

proceeded. As may be observed in the example of the Porto, Piranesi could embrace all 

traditions by means of this allegorical port opening from Venice to Asia and Africa. 

87

CHAPTER 5 

ASIA, EUROPE, AFRICA AND HISTORY OF STYLES IN 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

5.1. The Eighteenth-Century Debate on Origins and Its Background 

During the eighteenth century, architectural circles of Western Europe were 

engaged in a debate concerning the origins of Roman architecture. The most eminent 

architects and theorists such as Piranesi, Winckelmann, and Julien-David Le Roy (1724- 

1803) were involved in this debate. Among the leading controverters, Piranesi believed 

that although it owed some of its features to Grecian architecture, Roman civilization, 

art and architecture were not derived entirely from the Grecian civilization but rather 

based on the Etruscan which, in turn, was rooted in Archaic Egypt. 1 Against this view, 

leaning upon a two thousand year old tradition, some argued that Roman architecture 

was rooted in the Grecian. One of the most important defenders of this counter- 

argument was Winckelmann, who accelerated both the Greek revival and the rise of 

Neoclassicism. By taking as example the temples of Paestum in Naples, Italy, 

Winckelmann linked the roots of both the Roman and whole European architecture to 

that of the Grecian. According to Winckelmann, Paestum was in Grecian manner since 

it stimulated the effect of ‘nobility’ with respect to aesthetical concepts. 2 In his work 

entitled Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey und 

Bildbauer-Kunst and dated to 1755, Winckelmann defined Grecian architecture as 

having “edle Einfalt und stille Grösse”: ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’, and 

claimed that Romans, in copying Grecian architecture, had diminished the quality of 

‘beauty’ inherent in the latter. 3 He further developed this view in Gedanken’s 1765 

1 For Piranesi’s view on the origins of Roman architecture see his Observations on the Letter of 

Monsieur Mariette, pp. 87-88. 

2 For Winckelmann’s opinions on Paestum’s aesthetical quality see his The History of Ancient 

Art, trans. G. H. Lodge (Boston: Osgood, 1764; 1880), p. 138. 

3 See Winckelmann, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Mahlerey 

und Bildbauer-Kunst, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, ed. Michele 

Cometa (Palermo: Aesthetica edizioni, 1755; 1992), p. 24. References to this work will be henceforward 

indicated in parentheses in the text. 

88

edition: ‘The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble 

simplicity and a quiet grandeur in posture as in expression’ (21-22). 4 In the 1765 edition 

of Gedanken, Winckelmann had elaborated further on Greek closeness to nature and 

thus on architecture’s originative power of beauty. ‘The Greeks alone’, he wrote, ‘seem 

to have thrown forth beauty as a potter makes his pot’ (264). Winckelmann stated that 

the aesthetical priority of Greece derived from its proximity to nature, and that this 

proximity was determined by its characteristic of being the ‘first’. 

Another important name was the French Jesuit theorist Marc-Antoine Laugier 

(1711-1769). Laugier’s theories on the ‘origin’ and ‘importance of the imagination in 

architectural design’ stated in his Essai sur l’Architecture (Essay on Architecture, 1753) 

also served as a provocative work for Piranesi. His admiration towards Greece had 

Laugier set a defence in his work about the superiority of ancient Greek architectural 

design to that of the Roman. Laugier based his claim related to the superiority of 

Grecian architecture on the chronological precedence of this civilization and on the 

‘rustic hut’ which had been described by Marcus Vitruvius (80/70 BC-25 BC) as the 

first human dwelling (Fig. 5.1). Laugier argued that Greeks had been able to develop 

this hut because they came prior to the Romans in history. 5 

Figure 5.1. Marc-Atoine Laugier, Rustic Hut, Essai, 1753 

4 Winckelmann’s original words are as follows: “Das allgemeine vorzügliche Kennzeichen der 

griechischen Meisterstücke ist endlich eine edle Einfalt, und eine stille Größe, sowohl in der Stellung als 

im Ausdrucke.” 

5 For Vitruvius’s description of the ‘rustic hut’ see Vitruvius, De architectura libri decem, The 

Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1914; 1960), 

Book II: I C. References to this work will be henceforward indicated in parentheses in the text. 

89

Laugier attributed the right to originate the ‘rustic hut’ to Greeks because of their 

chronological priority. The ‘rustic hut’ also referred the functional principles of nature 

and provided architecture with a base. Thus Laugier: 

[…] man in his earliest origins, without any other, without other guide that the natural instinct of 

his needs. He wants a place to settle. Beside a tranquil stream he sees a meadow; the fresh turf 

pleases his eye, the tender down invites him. He approaches; and reclining on the bright colours 

of this carpet he thinks only of enjoying the gifts of nature in peace; he lacks nothing, he desires 

nothing; but presently the sun’s heat begins to scorch him, and he is forced to look for shelter. A 

neighbouring wood offers the cool of its shadows, he runs to hide in its thicket; and he is content 

again. Meanwhile a thousand vapours which had risen in various places meet and join; thick 

clouds obscure the air, and fearful rains stream in torrents down on the delicious wood. The man, 

inadequately sheltered by leaves, does not know how to defend himself against the discomfort of 

a humidity which seems to attack him all sides. A cave comes into view: he slips into it; finding 

himself sheltered from the rain he is delighted with his discovery. But new defects make this 

dwelling disagreeable as well: he lives in the dark; the air he has to breath is unhealthy. He 

leaves the cave determined to compensate by his industry for the omissions and neglect of 

nature. Man wants a dwelling which will house, not bury him. Some branches broken off in the 

forest are material to his purpose. He chooses four of the strongest, and raises them 

perpendicularly to the ground, to form a square. On these four he supports four others laid across 

them; above these he lays some which incline to both sides, and come to a point in the middle. 

This kind of roof is covered with leaves thick enough to keep out both sun and rain: and now 

man is lodged. True, the cold and the heat will make him feel their excesses in this house, which 

is open on all sides; but then he will fill the in-between spaces with columns and so find himself 

secure. 

The little hut which I have just described is the type on which all the magnificences of 

architecture are elaborated. It is by approximating to its simplicity of execution that fundamental 

defects are avoided and true perfection attained. The upright pieces of wood suggest the idea of 

columns, the horizontal pieces resting on them, entablatures. Finally, the inclined members 

which constitute the roof provide the idea of a pediment. Note then what all masters of the art 

have confessed. Never has there been a principle more fruitful in its consequences; with it as 

guide it is easy to distinguish those parts which are essential components of an order of 

architecture from those parts which are only introduced through necessity or added by caprice. 

[…] Let us never lose sight of our little hut. 6 

Rykwert observes that Laugier places his hut on the same riverbank as Jean-Jacques 

Rousseau. Rousseau’s hut is indeed similar to Laugier’s, but with respect to the moral 

principles rather than architectural ones. 7 

His philhellenism notwithstanding, Le Roy shared with Piranesi the view of 

Egypt’s importance: different from the rest, in his Ruines, Le Roy asserted that Greeks 

inherited the concept of monumental architecture from the Egyptians and thus agreed 

with Piranesi to a certain extent since he also argued that the roots of monumental 

6 Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture (1753; Farnborough: Gregg, 1966), p. 2. 

7 Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise, pp. 43-44, 46-47. Wilton-Ely also claims that 

Laugier’s view is the architectural version of Rousseau’s: Piranesi as Architect and Designer, p. 36. 

90

architecture were in Egypt. 8 At the point of architectural inheritance from Egypt, 

Piranesi and Le Roy shared the same stance. Nonetheless, Le Roy maintained that 

monumental European architecture was created by Greeks while Piranesi found that 

Etruscans in Egypt’s wake invented it. Piranesi claimed that Romans inherited the 

architectural talent of Etruscans, and thus undertook sublime building in Rome. Le Roy, 

like Winckelmann, advocated the opposite by insisting that Romans had debased the 

beautiful architecture of Greeks by copying and lowering it to a shameful position 

because of lack of ‘creative genius’: 

It seems that the Romans lacked the kind of creative genius that allowed the Greeks to make so 

many discoveries. They did not create anything of note in the orders. The one that is attributed to 

their invention, the Composite, is only a fairly imperfect mixture of the Ionic and Corinthian, and 

by altering the proportions of the column from the Doric order and by multiplying the mouldings 

of its entablature, they have perhaps made it lose a lot of its male character, which was its 

distinguishing feature in Greece. 9 

On the other hand, Piranesi’s claim, which stated that Roman architecture was 

rooted in Etruscan and Egyptian architectures, was supported by the teachings of the 

Franciscan monk, Carlo Lodoli. Lodoli’s views on architecture were found 

controversial in eighteenth-century Rome. Lodoli expressed his belief in the ‘Egyptian 

origin’ of Roman civilization in a stronger tone than even Piranesi: Lodoli had quite 

extraordinary but at the same time assertive claims in relation to historical authenticity 

such as his claim that the Doric order should be called the Egyptian order or that the 

Tuscan order had been invented by Egyptians. 10 Another scholar and one of the 

disciples of Lodoli, the Italian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul, Andrea 

8 For Le Roy’s assertion see Le Roy, Ruines, p. 13. Also see Wilton-Ely’s introduction to the 

volume of Piranesi, Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 17, 65. 

9 Le Roy’s original words are as follows: “Il paroit que les Romains manquèrent de ce génie 

créateur qui avoit ait faire tant de découvertes aux Grecs: ils n’imaginèrent rien de considérable dans les 

Ordres; celui dont ils s’attribuoient ‘invention, que l’on nomme Composite, n’est qu’un mélange assez 

imparfait de l’Ionique et du Corinthien; et a force d’élever la proportion des colonnes de l’Ordre Dorique, 

et de multiplier les moulures de son entablement, ils lui ont peut-être fait perdre beaucoup de ce caractère 

male qui le distinguoit dans la Grèce.” Le Roy, Ruines, p. 13. Also see Wilton-Ely’s introduction to the 

volume of Piranesi, Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, p. 65 n.40. 

10 Lodoli’s opinion was cited from Memmo’s work of Andrea Memmo, Elementi d’architettura 

Lodoliana; ossia, L’arte del fabbricare con solidità scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa (Zara: Tipi 

dei Fratelli Battara, 1833; Milan: G. Mazzotta, 1973), pp. 296-97n.48. For further discussions see Wilton- 

Ely’s introduction to the volume of Piranesi, Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, p. 21; and 

Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 322. 

91

Memmo, claimed that the Phoenicians, Jews, Etruscans and Greeks had obtained their 

architectural styles from the Egyptians. 11 

The concrete critical example to Piranesi’s approach is manifest in his evaluation 

of one of the Roman fountains, Aqua Felice (Fig. 5.2). In the “Apologetical Essay” 

written as a preface to his book entitled Diverse maniere—which was written in Italian, 

French and English by himself in order to address a wider community—Piranesi praises 

the lions that are in the Egyptian manner whereas he denigrates those he accepts to be in 

the Grecian manner and depicts the Aqua Felice as follows: 

I have in view, among other works of theirs [i.e. the Egyptians], the two Lions or Leopards 

which serve to adorn the fountain of the Felician aqueduct in Rome, together with two others 

studiously copied, both as to action and design from nature, that is, worked after the Grecian 

Manner. What majesty in the Egyptian ones, what gravity and wisdom, what union and 

modification of parts! How artfully are those parts set of which are agreeable to architecture, 

while those are suppressed which are not advantageous to it! Those other lions on the contrary, 

which are exactly copied from nature, and to which the artist capriciously gave what attitude he 

pleased, what have they to there? They only serve to diminish the great effect which the 

Egyptian ones gave to the architecture of that fountain; which, however, is not one of the most 

elegant (Diverse maniere, 14). 

Figure 5.2. Detail from the view of the main fountain of the Acqua Felice demonstrating the ‘Egyptian 

lions’, Vedute, 1760 

11 For Memmo’s claim see Memmo, Elementi, pp. 296-97. For a discussion about this subject see 

Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 323. 

92

In the Diverse maniere, Piranesi was inclined towards a design approach composed of 

Egyptian archetypes and figures. In general, the series includes creative interior designs 

embellished with Egyptian figures. As mentioned above, the controversial 

“Apologetical Essay” accompanied these drawings. In the conclusion of the 

“Apologetical Essay,” Piranesi denotes his new system of design depending on the 

principles of Egyptian and Etruscan styles without excluding that of the Grecian. In the 

following passage, Piranesi implies the ‘Etruscan’ by the word ‘Tuscan’: 

Must the Genius of our artists be so basely enslaved to the Grecian manners, as not to dare to 

take what is beautiful elsewhere, if it be not of Grecian origin? But let us at last shake of[f] this 

shameful yoke, and if the Egyptians, and Tuscans present to us, in their monuments, beauty, 

grace, and elegance, let us borrow from their stock, servilely copying from others, for this would 

reduce architecture and the noble arts [to] a pitiful mechanism, and would deserve blame instead 

of praise from the public who seek for novelty, and who would not form the most advantageous 

idea of an artist, as was perhaps the opinion some years ago, for a good design, if it was only a 

copy of some ancient work. No, an artist, who would do himself honour, and acquire a name, 

must not content himself with copying faithfully the ancients, but studying their works he ought 

to show himself of an inventive, and, I had almost said, of a creating Genius; And by prudently 

combining the Grecian, the Tuscan, and the Egyptian together, he ought to open himself a road 

to the finding out of new ornaments and new manners. The human understanding is not so short 

and limited, as to be unable to add new graces, and embellishments to the works of architecture, 

if to an attentive and profound study of nature one would likewise join that of the ancient 

monuments (Diverse maniere, 33). 

As is clear from the expressions of the different parties regarding the debate of 

origins, discourses related to aesthetics and origin were intertwined with each other in 

the eighteenth century. In other words, debates related to the origin were based on 

aesthetical discussions and at least the philhellenic scholars were claiming that when 

copying it, the Romans had diminished the values of ‘beautiful’ Greece. The 

distinguishing feature of Piranesi emerges at this point: rooting the origin of Roman 

architecture in Egypt rather than Greece, he argued that the sublime character of 

Egyptian architecture was inherited by the Romans. 12 We know that the sublime was the 

fundamental concept of the aesthetical understanding during the period. 13 In other 

words, Piranesi replied Winckelmann and his followers, who advocated the ‘beauty’ of 

Greece, with the concept of ‘sublime’ which was placed above ‘beauty’ in the hierarchy 

315-17. 

12 For a discussion of Piranesi’s argument regarding this point, see Rykwert, First Moderns, pp. 

13 For the aesthetical notions, debates and their effects on the eighteenth-century arts and 

architecture see Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts, pp. 166-74; Kant, Observations on the 

Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, pp. 45-116; Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our 

Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, pp. 49-73. 

93

of aesthetics. Crystallizing since the 1750s, the aesthetical philosophy of the eighteenth 

century emerged along with such novel disciplines as archaeology, linguistics, and the 

history of art and architecture. Since he believed that monumental Roman architecture 

was derived from Egypt, by claiming that Romans and Greeks did not have any 

relations at least as far as architectural borrowings went, Piranesi rejected the theory 

arguing that Roman architecture failed in maintaining Grecian values. Therefore, by 

definition, like all monumental architecture, Egyptian architecture was sublime. 

What lies, then, in the background of these eighteenth-century origin debates 

and what was there before the distinction, as points of origin, between Greek and 

Egyptian became an issue? The origin debates, which began in the eighteenth century 

and continued through the nineteenth, were related to determining the pre-national 

sources of the national culture. Therefore, the debates on national architecture 

progressed along with developments in the discipline of archaeology. In fact, the 

emergence of systematic archaeological activities can be explained by the directions 

research on national culture was taking. For example, the Scandinavian, Teutonic and 

British cultures, geographically, and hence historically, located at a distance from the 

archaic and antique civilizations of the Mediterranean, were compelled to search for 

traces of ancient cultures in their own geography whereas, placed at the orbit of Rome, 

Central and South European cultures enjoyed the ease with which they could readily 

avail themselves of roots in the Roman civilization. 14 The south too faced a problem, 

however, when it came to establishing what was before Rome. It was at that point that 

such debates as described above emerged. Italians like Piranesi had at least two grounds 

for arguing that the Roman culture and architecture had its roots not in Greece but 

somewhere else: contrary to other regions of Europe, because of their geographic 

proximity to the Grecian culture, Italians were able to observe Greek examples directly 

or to obtain first-hand vivid descriptions from travellers. They could directly determine 

to what extent and whether their own architecture and the Grecian were dissimilar. The 

situation of Italians was entirely different than that of the British for example. The latter 

were able to realize only after seeing, in the nineteenth century, the sculpture Lord Elgin 

had stripped from the Parthenon and shipped to Britain, that their aesthetical conception 

of Antique Greece for almost a century had no relationship whatsoever to the truth of 

14 For the search for ancient national-cultural roots in the north, and the comparison in this 

respect of the north with Italians, see Deniz engel, Dickens ve Sidney: ngiltere’de Ulusal Edebiyatın 

Kurulu u (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2002), pp. 8-11, 17-22, 38-39, 51-52, 74-75. 

94

Greek sculpture. 15 The second proof Italians like Piranesi had available was the concrete 

presence of Etruscan ruins belonging to the pre-Roman period. These could not have 

descended from the Greek. Hence a Piranesi felt compelled to search for the origins of 

Etruscan art and architecture elsewhere. Equipped with a strong training both in 

languages and historical texts, and in architectural design and drawing, he was able to 

deploy himself for groundbreaking research into origins. 16 

Perhaps one of the most trenchant examples of how intertwined origin debates 

and archaeology were in the eighteenth century as well as of how Italians were able to 

produce views through their capacity of direct observation is the polemic that arose over 

Paestum. Significantly, the Paestum research also coalesced with an aesthetic-stylistic 

discussion. Despite the fact that the discovery of Paestum, which, as stated above, was 

the essential support for Winckelmann’s argument, cannot be precisely dated, we know 

that after 1750 expeditions to this region grew more frequent despite the geographical 

problems posed by access and despite pirate attacks. 17 As a result of the scientific 

expeditions, writers like Winckelmann could draw on the Paestum example in the 

debate on ‘origin’. Father Antonio Paoli (1720-1790), who was one of these writers, 

thought that the fragments discovered at Paestum intimated a style too ‘stumpy’ to be 

product of ‘refined Grecian architecture’. According to Winckelmann’s account, Paoli 

surmised that these buildings were ‘Oriental’, by which he meant Etruscan, because of 

their ‘stumpy’ proportions: Paoli asserted that these were ‘even squatter than the canons 

of Vitruvius’. 18 Paoli was describing Etruscan civilization and architecture as ‘Oriental’ 

because he believed the Etruscan derived from the Egyptian. 

Piranesi did not, however, determine Egypt as a source for Roman architecture 

and leave it at that. He also exemplified the richness of Egyptian art and architecture 

through a large number of visual and literary works. One of his controversial works in 

15 For a discussion of the Elgin Marbles and the crisis in aesthetic conception they produced in 

England, see Rochelle Gurstein, “The Elgin Marbles, Romanticism and the Waning of ‘Ideal Beauty’,” 

Daedalus 131: 4 (Fall 2002): 88. 

Moderns, p. 268. 

16 For Piranesi’s training see Chapter 3, pp. 27-41. 

17 For information on the journeys to Paestum and the geographical problems, see Rykwert, First 

18 For Paoli’s identification of the Etruscan as Oriental see Winckelmann, The History of Ancient 

Art, p. 30. For a discussion about this subject see Rykwert, First Moderns, pp. 270-71. It is also worth 

looking at the illustrations to Vitruvius in the Granger edition, vol. I: Vitruvius, On Architecture, edited 

from the Harleian Manuscript 2767, trans. Frank Granger (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; 

London: William Heinemann, 1983). 

95

this field, the Parere, published in 1765, mainly consists of the debate between scholar 

Didascalo (literally meaning ‘teacher’) and Protopiro (literally meaning ‘the first to set 

fire’). In the Parere, ‘Didascalo’ may have represented the Franciscan monk Lodoli or 

Piranesi himself. ‘Protopiro’ may have represented one from the opposite side of the 

debate which included Mariette, Laugier, Winckelmann, and Francesco Milizia (1725- 

1798). 19 Contrary to Didascalo, which as a name contains no irony, the name of 

Protopiro bears sarcastic reference to the Greek Prometheus. In the dialogue, Didascalo 

represents the power of imagination in architecture as well as Piranesi’s conception of 

design which is based on the Egyptian-Etruscan styles and which we have seen critics to 

describe as ‘eclectic’ with respect to the history of dominant styles. Protopiro, on the 

other hand, tries, in the dialogue, to prove that the quality of ‘plain and noble beauty’, 

which Grecian architecture possesses, is superior to Roman architecture, especially to 

Piranesi’s conception of architecture, which, according to Protopiro, is ‘mere 

extravagant ornamentation’. 20 

Nonetheless, Piranesi advocated the “functions of ornamentation” in buildings in 

the words by Didascalo: 

Didascalo: So, it is Greece and Vitruvius? Very well: tell me, then, what do columns 

represent? Vitruvius says they are the forked uprights of huts; others describe them as tree trunks 

placed to support the roof. And the flutes on the columns: what do they signify? Vitruvius thinks 

they are the pleats in a matron’s gown. So the columns stand neither for forked uprights nor for 

tree trunks but for women placed to support a roof. Now what do you think about flutes? It 

seems to me that columns ought to be smooth. Therefore, take note: smooth columns. The forked 

uprights and tree trunks should be planted in the earth, to keep them stable and straight. Indeed 

that is how the Dorians thought of their columns. Therefore they should have no bases. Take 

note: no bases. The tree trunks, if they were used to support the roof, would be smooth and flat 

on top; the forked props can look like anything you like, except capitals. If that is not definite 

enough, remember that the capitals must represent solid things, not heads of men, maidens, or 

matrons, or baskets with foliage around them, or baskets topped with a matron’s wig. So take 

note: no capitals. Never fear; there are other rigorists who also call for smooth columns, no 

bases, and no capitals. 

As for architraves, you want them to look either like tree trunks placed horizontally 

across the forked props or like beams laid out to span the tree trunks. So what is the point of the 

fasciae or of the band that projects from the surface? To catch the water and go rotten? Take 

note: architraves with no fasciae and no band. 

What do the trygliphs stand for? Vitruvius says that they represent the ends of the joists 

of ceilings or soffits. When they are placed at the corners of the building, however, not only do 

they belie this description but they can never be placed at regular intervals, because they have to 

be centred over the columns. If they are moved away from the corners, they can then be placed 

symmetrically only if the building is narrowed or widened with respect to the trygliphs. It is 

19 For Rykwert’s and Wilton-Ely’s different estimates of ‘Protopiro’, see Rykwert, On Adam’s 

House in Paradise, pp. 53-4; and Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, p. 51. 

20 For the dialogue between Didascalo and Protopiro see Piranesi, “Parere su l’Architettura,” in 

Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 102-14. 

96

madness that a few small cuts on stone or mortar should dictate the proportions of a building, or 

that all or some of the due requirements of the building should be sacrificed to them. Thus, the 

ancient architects cited by Vitruvius held that temples ought not to be built in the Doric manner; 

better still, the Romans used the Doric without the added clutter. So take note: friezes without 

trygliphs. Now it is your turn, Signor Protopiro, to purge architecture of all the other ornaments 

that you disparaged just now. 

Protopiro: What? Have you finished? 

Didascalo: Finished? I have not even started. Let us go inside a temple, a palace, 

whatever you choose. Around the walls we shall observe architraves, friezes, and cornices 

adorned with those features that you just described as standing for the roof of a building— 

trygliphs, modillions, and dentils. And when those features are absent, and the friezes and 

cornices are smooth, even then the architraves and friezes will seem to support a roof and the 

cornices seem to be the eaves. These eaves, however, will drip rain inside the temple, the palace, 

or basilica. So the temple, the palace, or the basilica will be outside, and the outside inside, will 

they not? To rectify such anomalies, such travesties of architecture, take note: internal walls of 

buildings with no architraves, friezes, and cornices. 

And then, on these cornices, which stand for eaves, vaults are erected. This is an even 

worse impropriety than those episkënia on the roofs that we discussed a little while ago and that 

Vitruvius condemns. 

Therefore take note: buildings with no vaults. 

Let us observe the walls of a building from inside and outside. These walls terminate in 

architraves and all that goes with them above; below these architraves, most often we find 

engaged columns or pilasters. I ask you, what holds up the roof of the building? If the wall, then 

it needs no architraves, if the columns or pilasters, what is the wall there for? Choose, Signor 

Protopiro. Which will you demolish? The walls or the plasters? No answer? Then I will demolish 

the whole lot. Take note: buildings with no walls, no columns, no pilasters, no friezes, no 

cornices, no vaults, no roofs. A clean sweep. 21 

Figure 5.3. Chimneypiece in Etruscan manner, Diverse maniere, 1769 

The chimneypiece in the Etruscan manner (Fig. 5.3) published in the Diverse 

maniere is a sample for the eclectic design approach expounded by Piranesi through the 

21 Piranesi, Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 105-06. 

97

interlocutor Didascolo. On the other hand, the drawing by Milizia (Fig. 5.4) reflects the 

manner of Greek purity advocated by Protopiro. 22 It is also noteworthy that Piranesi’s 

theoretical work in the Parere historically coincides with the realization of his only 

executed architectural work, Santa Maria del Priorato (1764-1766). Because of this 

coincidence, we may, in other words, surmise that Piranesi’s “Opinions on 

Architecture” were put into practice through the ‘renovation’ of the Priorato. 

Figure 5.4. Francesco Milizia, drawing from the Del Teatro, 1773 

We in fact come across the Egyptian obelisks (Fig. 5.5) between the walls 

enclosing the Priorato’s piazza designed by Piranesi. 23 As seen in these examples, 

Piranesi’s designs represent an ‘eclectic’ appearance at first glance. Nevertheless, it may 

be erroneous to describe Piranesi only as a figure representing the eclectic style. The 

fact that Piranesi combined design principles from different periods and cultures should 

be considered as the expression of his opinions regarding architectural history, and the 

lineage of interaction of architectural manners and styles. Piranesi considered this 

lineage to follow the order of Egyptian : Etruscan : Roman. In this context, similar to 

22 Francesco Milizia, Del Teatro (Venice: Giambatista Pasquali, 1773). 

23 For a discussion about the obelisks in the piazza of Priorato see Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as 

Architect and Designer, pp. 55-56. 

98

Father Paoli, Piranesi described the origins of the Roman architecture as ‘Oriental’. If, 

following Slavoj Zizek, we take historicism to be an ‘infinite chain of substitutions 

constructed upon the same foundation’, 24 for Piranesi, Egypt constituted the foundation 

of the historicist historiography of architecture he was establishing. However, Piranesi 

employed the description of ‘Oriental’ in a sense quite different from its modern use: he 

used the term from a cosmographic perspective that did not ascribe negative judgement, 

and thus was different from, say, Edward Said’s (1978) degrading meaning which the 

latter attributed to the whole of history. In this respect, as we shall see below, Piranesi 

pursued a history of architecture and a conception of design entirely different from that 

of a David Roberts (1796-1864). 

Figure 5.5. One of flanking stelae on the south wall, Santa Maria del Priorato, 1764-1766 

24 See Slavoj Zizek, “Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes Please,” in Contingency, 

Hegemony, Universality, ed. Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek (London: Verso, 2000), p. 

112. 

99

5.2. Perception of ‘Orient’ in Piranesi 

Piranesi’s perception of Egypt and Europe derived from an understanding of 

cosmography not much different than the one we find in antiquity. This cosmography 

did not yet contain a distinction between East and West. Hence, in the eighteenth 

century, it did not belong to a framework which placed Egypt in the East and Italy in the 

West, and which assumed that there was no permeability between one and the other. It 

is possible to represent the seamless continuity Piranesi comprehended between Italy 

and Egypt through the cosmography found in maps belonging to the period before the 

distinction between the East and the West. In fact, the world in Fig. 5.6 corresponds to 

such a perception of the world as can be gathered from the Homeric epics and Strabo of 

Amasia’s Geographia (7 BC-18/19 AD). 25 This particular cartographic 

conceptualization largely depends, however, on Dionysius of Alexandria’s Periegetes of 

124 AD. The Greek title of the work literally means ‘about the world’ and was used so 

widely—above all as school text book—as to lend Dionysius the name of Dionysius 

Periegetes. Periegetes was the contemporary of Ptolamaeus and Marinus. The work 

describes the world in 1186 verse lines. In order to enable students to remember the 

places on the map, Dionysius had written the Periegetes in the manner of rhyming 

verse. Dionysius’ importance for our research lies in the fact that his cosmography 

Figure 5.6. Cosmography around 124 AD 

25 In the reconstructions depicted in the maps in Fig. 5.6 and 5.7, the electronic publication 

entitled “Ancient Maps” at http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/ was consulted on 06.01.2006. 

100

endured and achieved prominence not only throughout Antiquity but also in the Latin 

Middle Ages. 26 The book was translated into Latin by Rufius Festus Avienus in the 

fourth century AD, and was employed as a standard reference source in Western Europe 

through the Middle Ages. 27 The world depicted in this book is but a single extended 

island not subject to an East-West division. It is a combination of the then known 

regions of the three continents of Asia, Europe and Africa. Piranesi was closer to 

Dionysius’ Hellenistic world view of the second century AD which did not distinguish 

between East and West, and which found its centric point in Egypt. 

The distinction between East and West emerged as a geographical distinction 

starting with the Romans. Ancient Romans used the terms Europe and Asia to define 

Eastern and Western halves of their territory. These terms served for militaristic and 

strategic purposes. The Latin word Europea had derived from the Greek term meaning 

‘vast’ and ‘large field’. While the Latin word Europeenses referred particularly to those 

people living in the regions to the west of Greece, the word Asia, again of Greek origin, 

was employed for territories of the Roman Empire including Anatolia. Literally 

meaning ‘the place where the sun rises’, the term oriens was invented by the Romans 

and was employed throughout the Hellenistic period and beyond. However, it did not 

carry any negative connotation. In the famous passage from Virgil’s Aeneid of the first 

century BC, we come across both this word oriens—which may be translated as east— 

and the word barbarian meaning ‘strange’ or ‘person not from Rome’. Contrary to 

critics’ claims about the following passage, 28 the term ‘east’ below does not indicate a 

negative judgment of the East on the part of the Roman poet since what is shunned is 

adultery and what is protected is the military interest of Rome: 

On the other side, with the wealth of the barbarian world and warriors in all kinds of different 

armour, came Anthony in triumph from the shores of the Red Sea and the people of the Dawn 

26 Strabo, Geography, ed. and trans. Horace Leonard Jones, Loeb Classical Library edition 

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917-32; 1969), II. C. 16. 

27 For information on Dionysius’ work see E. H. Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography, vol. 

II (London, 1879-1883), p. 490; and J. B. Harley, The History of Cartography (Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1987), I: 172. 

28 For a claim about the negativity of Rome’s judgment see Raymond Schwab, “The Orient: 

Word and Idea,” The Oriental Renaissance: Europe Rediscovery of India and the East 1680-1880 (New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 1. 

101

[Orient]. With him sailed Egypt and the power of the East from as far as distant Bactria, and 

there bringing up the rear was the greatest outrage of all, his Egyptian wife! 29 

As is known, for ancient Greeks, the word ‘barbarian’ (bárbaros) meant those 

‘people who do not speak as we do’; gradually, it came to mean ‘strange’. Contrary to 

today’s widespread opinion, the word neither bore a despising meaning in itself nor was 

identified with brutality. It raised rather the question of communication and primarily 

signified a linguistic differentiation. Similarly, as if confirming that the criterion in 

barbarism was defined on the basis of communication, Hebrews designated Egyptians— 

people with whom they had been living together since archaic times—as stutterers. 30 In 

the Poetics, for instance, Aristotle provides the typology of common and proper nouns, 

and classifies words as ‘ordinary’, ‘strange’, ‘metaphorical’, ‘ornamental’, ‘invented’, 

‘lengthened’, ‘curtailed’ and ‘altered’ (Poetics, 1457b2). Here, the category of ‘strange’ 

does not bear an ideological meaning. As a matter of fact, Aristotle provides an 

explanation following this classification, and states that what is a ‘strange’ word may 

vary according to user: “An ‘ordinary’ word is one used by everybody, a ‘strange’ word 

one used by some; so that a word may obviously be both ‘ordinary’ and ‘strange’, but 

not in relation to the same people” (Poetics, 1457b3). 

When we look at historical notions on cosmography, we find that the 

geographical position of Egypt has borne importance in all historical periods. The 

distinguishing feature of Egypt for early historians and geographers was that it 

‘disturbed’ the unity of the cosmography composed of three continuous continents. It 

disturbed, at least, the cartographic unity of the known Roman world: as we see in the 

cosmography represented in Fig. 5.6, the Nile River on the one hand, and the Red Sea 

on the other, which is already perceived as very wide, is like an incision in the whole. A 

close-up of the Nile and the Red Sea as described by Herodotus obtains the map in Fig. 

5.7. 31 

29 Virgil, The Aeneid, prose trans. and introduction David West (Harmondsworth: Penguin 

Books, 1990; 1991), VIII. 684-89. 

30 The example about the definition of Egyptians as stutterers by Hebrews is given by Schwab to 

defend an argument very different from ours: see Schwab, “The Orient: Word and Idea,” The Oriental 

Renaissance, p. 2. In our opinion, by following Said (1978) anachronistically, Schwab placed the 

disposition for despising the ‘other’ and especially the one classified as ‘eastern’ in all periods as in 

archaic culture. This disposition was developed in the eighteenth century and reached the peak by 

Modernism and today’s world views. 

31 For Herodotus’ distinction see Herodotus, The Histories, trans. A. de Sélincourt (Baltimore: 

Penguin Books, 1954), pp. 134-35. 

102

Figure 5.7. Asia - Africa distinction according to Herodotus, 450 BC 

This tripartite continental cosmography taking Egypt as a point of gravity was 

transmitted from Herodotus to Dionysius, whence to the Middle Ages through 

Dionysius’ Latin translations. From there, it was assimilated into theology in the 

Christian Middle Ages—at least in the Latin West. As if confirming our construction of 

a continuous itinerary of the unified view of the continents, medieval T-O maps 

represented a world again composed of Asia, Europe and Africa. 32 T-O maps are termed 

thus by the Latin initials of the term for ‘world’: terrarum orbis. The designation 

distinguished world maps from regional maps. The letters of the map type, moreover, 

served the layered medieval semiotic as T represented the cross and O referred to the 

globe of the world itself. In these maps, three continents were placed together so as for 

the main volumes of water to form a T in the middle of the continents’ O. The 

horizontal line of T was composed of the Mediterranean; the vertical line comprised the 

Red Sea, which had by now thickened even further as if to underscore its sacred 

significance and proportioned in order to create a vertical contrast with the 

Mediterranean. In these maps, the Nile River and the Red Sea were sometimes united to 

thicker the vertical axis of the letter T. The T was placed like a cross, within the circle 

of the world sphere (of the O). 

An early example to this type of map is the exceedingly stylized map of Isidore 

(570-636 AD) dated to the seventh century (Fig. 5.8). Etymologiarum sive Originum 

32 For T-O maps of the Middle Ages see George Kimble, Geography of the Middle Ages (New 

York: Russell & Russell, 1968), p. 23. 

103

libri XX (‘Twenty Books on Etymologies and Origins’) by Isidore was one of the most 

widely consulted texts of the early Middle Ages. In this map the earth is placed inside a 

circle in which the phrase ‘ocean sea’ (oceanum mare) is inscribed. The East (Ori s or 

Oriens) is depicted at the top and the West (occid s or occidens) at the bottom. The 

most important direction, signifying the rising point of the sun, Oriens displays a capital 

initial and in accordance with its theological importance, is placed at the top—where 

modern maps place the north—of the space of representation. Apart from the south 

(Meri.: Meridianus) and the north (Sep.: Septemtrio), the continents of Asia, Europe and 

Africa are also indicated in Isidore’s map. Shem, Japheth and Ham refer to the regions 

to where the three sons of Noah migrated after the Flood had subsided. The map 

indicates that the sons of Shem comprised the people of Asia, the sons of Japheth 

comprised the people of Europe, and the sons of Ham comprised the people of Africa. 

Thus, the grounds upon which the unified tripartite cosmography of the continents 

protected its continuity during the Christian Middle Ages is laid bare: the three 

continents were combined under the ancestry of Noah. Mare magn (mare magnum: the 

great sea), the Mediterranean; meoti palus (Maeotis palus), Gulf of Azov; Nillus flu. 

(Nillus flumen), the Nile River; Tanais flum (Tanais flumen), the Don River signify the 

water masses in the map. Isidore’s map may be represented by placing the north to the 

top as in Fig. 5.9. The map emphasizes the cross by accepting the Don River as a 

continuum to the Nile. 

Figure 5.8. Isidore, T-O map, Etymologiarum Figure 5.9. Isidore’s T-O map translated 

sive Originum libri XX into English with north at the top 

104

In the map in Fig. 5.10, the shape of O is circumscribed by the ‘shape of the 

universe’ which was the principle architectonic form of Gothic culture which referred to 

the silhouette of the Gothic cathedral in the thirteenth century. The T-O route in 

Isidore’s map can also be seen in the detailed map by Hereford. T-O maps, the 

perception of the tripartite continental cosmography expressed by these maps, and more 

importantly, their feature of rejecting any political or cultural hierarchy between the 

continents were still current issues in the work entitled La Sfera (circa 1420) written by 

Leonardo Dati, prominent Italian historicist of the early fifteenth century. Even after the 

discovery of America, these features still survived as seen in the 1628 work entitled 

Variae orbis universi by Petrus Bertius. 33 

Figure 5.10. Hereford mappa mundi (Hereford world map), 1290, Library of Hereford Cathedral 

Similarly, Dionysius’ cosmography preserved its continuity until the threshold 

of Piranesi’s culture: the work entitled Dionysii orbis descriptio (Dionysius’ world 

description: Fig. 5.11), published in 1697 in Oxford, contained the original text in Greek 

and its Latin translation. Besides, it included a preface by Gerardus Joannes Vossius 

33 For references to T-O maps see M. Destombes, Mappemondes, A.D. 1200-1500 via 

Monumenta Cartographica vetustioris aevi: Catalogue preparte par la Commission des Cartes Anciennes 

de l’Union Geographique Internationale (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1964), pp. 29-34, 54-64; and Harley, The 

History of Cartography, pp. 255, 301-303, 320, 343. 

105

(1577-1649), the famous scientist; notes by Andreas Papius (1552-1581) published first 

in 1575, and other important glosses and additions. The cover picture in the edition 

prepared by Edward Thwaites (1667-1711) shows the three continents of Europe, Asia, 

Africa in three niches integrated in classical architectonic style which would be 

sustained through the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century. During the 

Renaissance and subsequent periods, the idea of unity of the three continents still 

survived in spite of the rapidly changing cosmographic and cartographic notions in the 

culture of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Descartes. 34 

Figure 5.11. Dionysii orbis descriptio, cover pages, 1697 

Hence, as we approach the threshold of Piranesi’s culture, we find still surviving 

a cosmographic tradition rejecting the division of continents. The continental division 

was going to emerge along with the developing East-West division in the eighteenth 

century, as colonialist objectives crystallize. Nevertheless, Greece was accepted as East 

even by Winckelmann who praised Greece and who rejected rooting European culture 

in Egypt. The division between East and West deepened the eighteenth century wore on. 

34 For changing cosmographic and cartographic notions in the Renaissance and subsequent 

periods, see Jacques Merleau-Ponty, and Bruno Morando, The Rebirth of Cosmology (New York: Alfred 

A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 63-96. 

106

5.3. Piranesi and Scientific Method 

Piranesi declared Egyptian civilization as the root of not only the Etruscan and 

Roman, but also the Grecian. Thus Egypt lay in the background of all modern European 

architecture. He explicitly illustrated this argument by showing Roman architecture to 

‘lean on’ the Egyptian. Especially his series Varie Vedute published in 1745 evince 

examples of such illustration. The drawings entitled Pyramid of Cestius in this series in 

turn represent the most expressive examples for Piranesi’s controversial arguments on 

the origin of the Roman civilization: in one of these drawings, given in Fig. 5.12, a 

Romanesque building is depicted in front of a pyramid as if it were ‘leaning’ on the 

pyramid at its (the Romanesque building’s) left corner. The shadow of the Romanesque 

building is cast upon the surface of the pyramid, albeit without either ‘distorting’ or 

‘disturbing’ the older structure’s magnificence. The positioning of these two 

architectures as one concretely as one ‘following’ the other indicates both Piranesi’s 

consideration of their chronological emergence, and translate into drawing the notion 

that Roman architecture derives from Egyptian. 

Figure 5.12. Pyramid of Cestius, Varie Vedute, 1750 

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The importance attributed to Egypt both in drawings and in textual arguments by 

Piranesi has been considered as a stylistic indulgence for Egypt, as following up a 

fashion rather than comprising theses on the history of architecture. This perception also 

continues today as it has during the nineteenth century. 35 Even Wittkower interpreted 

the importance of Egypt for Piranesi as Egyptomania. 36 Moreover, the historical priority 

and ancestral status attributed to Egypt by Piranesi was seen as an ‘Orientalist 

inclination’ of him rather than a historical perception reaching beyond current 

ideologies and fashion. 37 Among the masterpieces of Piranesi, two series of the Carceri 

are also important in this context, because they were accepted by the said critics as 

conveying ‘Oriental’ or ‘barbaric’ influences (Fig. 2.4, 5.13). The first Carceri series 

was published in 1745 under the title of Invenzioni capricci di carceri, and the second 

was published in 1760 under the title of Carceri d’invenzione, as mentioned in Chapter 

2. ‘Sublimity’ generated by pathos is felt in both of the series. On the other hand, 

fragmented buildings defeated by time and overgrown by plants, and frustrated human 

beings scattered among the crumbling stones and torture tools are the dominant 

elements especially in the second Carceri series. In this respect, the Carceri series 

visualize the definition of the sublime provided by Kant and Burke. 38 According to Said, 

the view of the Carceri bearing “oriental” influences was designed in a “barbaric” 

manner (Fig. 2.4, 5.13), which highlighted and represented conditions like those 

experienced in “barbaric” Oriental countries. 39 Perhaps the last thing that can be said 

about the Carceri is that it is “Orientalist.” If the series would be evaluated within a 

socio-political frame, then research should be directed at the Europe of Piranesi’s day. 

35 For the nineteenth century interpretations of Piranesi’s tendency to Egypt, see Fletcher, A 

History of Architecture, pp. 846, 919. 

36 For Wittkower’s interpretation of Piranesi’s Egyptian view see his “Piranesi and Eighteenth 

Century Egyptomania,” pp. 259-73. 

37 For the interpretations implying Piranesi as ‘Oriental’, see Penny, Piranesi, pp. 10, 16; Said, 

Orientalism, pp. 128-9; Tafuri, Sphere and Labyrinth, p. 47; and Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 363. 

38 For Kant’s and Burke’s descriptions about the sublime see Kant, Observations on the Feeling 

of the Beautiful and Sublime, pp. 47-54; and Burke, Origin of Our Ideas of The Sublime and Beautiful, 

pp. 45-47, 51, 101-102. These will be taken up in detail in the next chapter. 

39 Orientalism, pp. 128-29. Said’s interpretation seems unfounded and improbable, and more 

indicative of a late twentieth-century Palestinian writer’s view of events in the eastern (Middle-Eastern) 

geography. Piranesi’s Carceri series are infinitely more complicated than the above cited judgement 

grasps. For similar critiques on the Carceri see Penny, Piranesi, p. 11. 

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Figure 5.13. Plate IX, Invenzioni capricci di carceri, 1745 

Eighteenth-century Europe was troubled and directed towards the year 1789 at 

full speed. Between the years of 1745 and 1760, when the Carceri series were 

produced, Italy was divided due to the War of the Spanish Succession; Sicily was given 

to the Duke of Savoia, and Naples to the King of Spain. At the end of the War of the 

Austrian Succession, Lombardy was left to the Habsburgs; and with the end of the 

sovereignty of the Medici family, Tuscany was given to the Duke of Lorrain. These 

‘foreign’ governors were disrupting Italy’s traditional systems in economics, taxation 

and guilds. Traditional systems including the penal code collapsed and new criminal 

laws brought into force. Furthermore, Italy was going to see Napoleon’s invasion, be 

scene to wars between Austria and France, and surrender a great part of land—including 

Venice—to France. While violence, crisis and upheaval were shaking Italy, Piranesi 

was drawing his Carceri series. 40 In other words, it was not necessary for Piranesi to 

travel to the ‘east’ in order to see or represent barbarism. In this historical moment, 

Italian intellectual groups including Piranesi himself were to coalesce in the movement 

against the penal system, particularly against capital punishment. Italians were 

exceedingly active in the movements of the humanization of the penal practice and 

abolishment of capital punishment—which were among the main projects of the 

40 Perhaps the most important historicist of the eighteenth-century Italy was still Franco Venturi. 

See Franco Venturi, Italy and the Enlightenment, Studies in a Cosmopolitan Century (London: Longman, 

1972). 

109

Enlightenment. Even Voltaire (1694-1778) had observed that, “it may well be that the 

Italians are ahead of us.” 41 Nonetheless, the Italian Penal Code that was developed by 

the end of the century was to be accepted as the most humanistic penal system until 

recent times. Four years after the publication of Piranesi’s second Carceri series, in 

1764, Cesare Beccaria was going to publish his work on Crime and Punishment which 

was going to be translated into twenty two languages within a short time. In Fig. 5.14, 

the illustration on the inner-cover of this book—which was translated into English in the 

same year—is seen. The drawing depicts rejection of capital punishment. 

Figure 5.14. Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764 

In other words, the violence and ‘barbarism’ criticized in Piranesi’s Carceri 

series were, in fact, a violence and ‘barbarism’ Italians could observe right at home. The 

Scottish landscape painter David Roberts, who painted views of Egypt (Fig. 5.15) and 

41 Voltaire’s words were quoted from Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the 

Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 

1981), p. 198. 

110

Jerusalem, 42 was perhaps a better example for Said and Penny, than Piranesi, since he 

believed that models of wildness and barbarism could only be seen in Oriental 

countries. Roberts detested Muslims and their barbarism which had caused great cities 

to deteriorate: 

Splendid cities, once teeming with a busy population and embellished with temples and edifices, 

the wonder of the world, now deserted and lonely, or reduced by mismanagement and the 

barbarism of the Muslim creed to a state as savage as wild animals by which they are 

surrounded. Often have I gazed on them till my heart actually sickened within me. 43 

For Said and Penny, as said, Roberts may have presented a more useful source than 

Piranesi. As a matter of fact, it is easier to find examples of Said’s view of Orientalism 

in the nineteenth century when Roberts also lived. 

Figure 5.15. David Roberts, Fragments of the Great Colossi at the Memnonium, 1847 

Most of Piranesi’s designs are full of pure Egyptian figures as we observe in the 

series of the Parere and the Diverse maniere (Fig. 5.16 and 5.17). Approaching 

architecture from the historical perspective, witnessing the founding period of the 

discipline of the history of architecture and contributing highly to this discipline, 

Piranesi was also one of the members of the discipline of archaeology which was newly 

42 David Roberts, Egypt, Nubia & the Holy Land, Catalogue (Seattle: Davidson Galleries, 2004). 

43 Robert’s explanation was quoted from Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myth of Orient: Devise and 

Rule (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 11. 

111

emerging. As expected during the emergence phase of disciplines and scientific 

discourses, the adjacent human sciences like archaeology, history of art and 

architecture, and linguistics had not yet reached the kind of division they were going to 

reach at the end of the nineteenth century. Like Winckelmann, Piranesi thinking and 

working within this wide range of disciplines. Hence, Piranesi’s drawings in pure 

Egyptian manner may be regarded both as archaeological works and, at a time when the 

discovery of the pyramids had not yet been completed, as ‘findings’ visualized by 

means of imagination and intuition based on historical information. If we remember that 

the discovery of the Egyptian pyramids and archaeological investigations were realized 

in 1798-1799 during Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, 44 we shall have better 

understanding regarding what kind of attention and imagination produced the 

chimneypiece of 1769. 

Figure 5.16. Plate VI, Parere, 1765 

44 For Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition see Wittkower, “Piranesi and Eighteenth Century 

Egyptomania,” p. 272. 

112

Figure 5.17. Chimneypiece in Egyptian manner, Diverse maniere, 1769 

Nonetheless, the drawing of Pianta del Serraglio delle fiere fabbricato da 

Dominiziano per uso dell’Anfiteatro (Fig. 5.18) from the series Antichità (1756) reflects 

Piranesi’s imagination, and meticulous research at excavation sites. Piranesi could 

imagine and draw the substructures of Pianta del Serraglio which had not yet been 

excavated in Piranesi’s time. After these covered parts were excavated, it was seen that 

Piranesi’s drawings were in accordance with the measurements of the real structure. 45 

Furthermore, especially the Antichità and Campo series indicated Piranesi’s inclination 

towards engineering. In the Antichità, for example, he drew the construction processes 

of the buildings and even the devices used in these constructions in full detail (Fig. 

5.19). Of course, apart from his inclination to engineering, here, the attention peculiar to 

a historicist also appears. A type of visual dictionary (Fig. 5.20) published in the 

Diverse maniere including the Etruscan motifs also signifies Piranesi’s systematic 

observation of archaeological excavations. 

45 For a discussion of Piranesi’s drawing of the Pianta del Serraglio (mentioned as Curia 

Hostilia by Wilton-Ely) see Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 57; and for scientific sensibility in Piranesi’s 

architectural drawings see Girón, “Drawing and Construction Analysis,” pp. 74-76. 

113

Figure 5.18. Pianta del Serraglio delle fiere fabbricato da Dominiziano per uso dell’Anfiteatro, showing 

substructure which was buried in Piranesi’s time, Antichità, IV, 1756 

Figure 5.19. Modo col quale furono alzati i grossi Travertini, e gli altri Marmi nel fabbricare il gran 

Sepolcro di Cecilia Metella, oggi detto Capo di Bove (The means by which the large 

travertine blocks and other marbles were lifted in the construction of the Great Tomb of 

Cecilia Metella, today called Capo di Bove), Plate LIII, first edition, Antichità, III, 1756 

114

Figure 5.20. A type of visual dictionary showing inventions attributed to Etruscans by Piranesi, Diverse 

maniere, 1769 

There are scholars appraising Piranesi’s scientific sensibility and achievements 

in spite of inadequate facilities in the eighteenth century. 46 There is, however, a question 

that needs to be explained in the Western history of architecture: the fact that some 

scholars criticized Piranesi for being ‘Orientalist’, as we see above, and for not being 

46 For positive interpretations of Piranesi’s drawing technique and scientific sensibility see 

Oechslin, “Piranesi to Libeskind,” pp. 15-35; and Girón, “Drawing and Construction Analysis,” pp. 74- 

76. 

115

scientific as Jennifer Bloomer and Serge Conard did. 47 Piranesi foresaw the critique of 

his work, and replied to present and future critics who were suspicious about the 

scientific character of his arguments, in the introduction of Campo: “I am rather afraid 

that parts of the Campus which I describe should seem figments of my imagination and 

not based on any evidence” (Campo, xi). 48 

47 For negative interpretations of Piranesi’s scientific sensibility see Bloomer, Architecture and 

the Text, pp. 70-72; and Serge Conard, “De l’architecture de Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, consideree dans ses 

rapports avec Piranese,” Piranèse et les français, Colloque Tenu à la Villa Médicis, 12-14 Mai 1976, ed. 

Georges Brunel (Rome: Edizioni dell’elefante, 1978), pp. 168-70. Also see Marshall, “Piranesi, Juvarra 

and the Triumphal Bridge Tradition,” p. 338n.155. 

48 Piranesi’s original words in the Campo are as follows: “Sebbene ciò di che io piuttosto temer 

dubio, si è, che non sembrino inventate a cappricio, più che prese dal vero, alcune cose di questa 

delianezione del Campo.” 

116

CHAPTER 6 

PIRANESI BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND SUBLIME 

6.1. Against a vil métier 

The eighteenth century saw an increasing number of debates and polemics in 

aesthetical theory. One of these concerned the difference between the beautiful and the 

sublime, which influenced especially philosophical approaches to art and design in 

poetry, music, painting, as well as in architecture. Two philosophers contributing to the 

discussion, Kant and Burke, had diverse views on the pair including such questions as 

their origins and inherence while agreeing that they were essential to appreciating 

human creativity. Architects and artists, moreover, utilized the notions of beautiful and 

sublime in their work both literarily in their writings and visually in design. In this 

lively environment flourishing around the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime, 

Piranesi etched in 1765 the fragment of a statement on the sublime by Le Roy. The 

fragment came from Le Roy’s 1758 Ruines and Piranesi placed the words on the 

inscription plate at the centre of the façade, directly above the entrance of the building 

he was depicting. The etching was published in Plate VIII of his dialogue Parere (Fig. 

6.1): “Pour ne pas faire de cet art sublime un vil métier où l’on ne feroit que copier sans 

choix”: ‘In order not to render this sublime art a vile craft where one would only copy 

without discretion’. 1 The wider context of Le Roy’s words in Ruines had called for 

discretion on the architect’s part in situating himself between blind compliance with 

classical norm and ‘accepting no rules whatsoever’ (“n’addmettre aucunes règles”) in 

the design of monuments. 2 Le Roy had further warned that, 

A fair appreciation of these principles should help us avoid two very dangerous improprieties in 

architecture: that of accepting no rules whatsoever and taking caprice as the only guide in the 

composition of Monuments; and that of accepting too many [rules]; constraining thereby 

1 Piranesi, “Parere su l’architettura,” in Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, pp. 

139, 152-153n.139. 

2 Le Roy, Ruines, p. 1. 

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Architects’ imagination and making of this sublime Art a species of craft in which each only 

copies, without discretion, that which has been done by some ancient Architects. 3 

Figure 6.6. Plate VIII, Parere, detail showing Le Roy’s statement, 1765 

Le Roy was using the term sublime to describe the architecture of monuments. 

Piranesi had used Le Roy’s statement as the central inscription of precisely a 

monument, identifying sublime architecture with architecture of monuments (Fig. 6.2). 

Figure 6.7. Plate VIII, Parere, 1765 

3 “Un juste appréciation de ces principes nous feroit éviter deux inconvénients très-dangereux 

dans l’Architecture, celui de n’admettre aucunes règles, et de ne prendre pour guide, dans la composition 

des Monuments que le caprice; et celui d’en admettre un trop grand nombre; de gêner par-la l’imagination 

des Architectes, et de faire de ce Art sublime un espèce de métier ou chacun ne feroit que copier, sans 

choix, ce qui a été fait par quelques Architectes anciens.” Le Roy, Ruines, p. 1. 

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Piranesi had also changed slightly Le Roy’s statement in order to render it more 

emphatic, substituting “un vil métier” (a vile craft) for Le Roy’s more neutral “un 

espèce de métier” (a species of craft). Le Roy too, however, had conceived of dogged 

compliance with classical norm as something lowly—a kind of ‘craft’ rather than Art. 

Both Piranesi and Le Roy were obviously within the bounds of eighteenth-century 

European culture in their view of a hierarchic distinction between art (art) and craft 

(métier). 4 While the profession of architecture had since Vitruvius been considered to be 

equally art and craft (De arch. Book I: II-III C.), the eighteenth century was 

increasingly separating the two domains and establishing a hierarchical relationship 

between them in which art superseded craft. The result was discussion in architectural 

environments as to the implications of this new division for the discipline. Le Roy, as 

we saw, was alerting that the artist-architect could commit faults that would degrade the 

architectural work into craft. Piranesi’s paraphrase of Le Roy with vil métier went 

further and described craft as ‘vile’ or ‘lowly’, identified mimetic architecture with 

craft, and made the difference between sublime architecture and classical imitation even 

more trenchant. By identifying architecture of monuments with a particular, elevated, 

style, however, both Piranesi and Le Roy participated in a hierarchic genre theory that 

remained Aristotelian, i.e., classical, as the very notion of generic hierarchy was and is 

classical. 

Thus the eighteenth-century debate on the beautiful and sublime concerned 

architecture in a particular way: it engaged the distinction between ‘beautiful 

architecture’ and ‘sublime architecture’ with a view on the degree of presence of 

classical rules as opposed to freedom from these rules and identified their difference as 

the gap between ‘Art’ and ‘craft’. The latter was furthermore identified with the 

imitation—mimesis—of classical architecture. Refraining from entering into a 

discussion of the art/craft distinction as this has been excellently conducted elsewhere, 5 

4 The typifying and familiar example for the distinction would be Diderot and D’Alembert’s 

Encyclopédie of 1751, in particular the entries métier, art, and architecture, the first two written by Denis 

Diderot and the last one by François Blondel: see Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert, 

Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 35 vols. (Paris, 1751). See 

also Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts, pp. 166-67, 172. 

5 For the history of the distinction on art/craft from Antiquity through the eighteenth century, see 

Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts, pp. 166-74; Rykwert, First Moderns, p. 297. But we must 

also add that since the Renaissance, architects, painters and sculptors had been arguing for the right of 

their discipline to be registered as art since, unlike craftsmen, artists could be knighted. Also, artists paid 

no or less tax depending on regional or national law. See Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy 1450- 

1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940; 1962), pp. 48-57. 

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this chapter investigates Piranesi’s drawings of sublime architecture against the 

background of the contemporary philosophical debate on the beautiful and sublime, and 

situates the eighteenth-century notion of sublime architecture in terms of the culture’s 

revisionary, but ambiguous, attitude to classicism. Piranesi should prove particularly 

significant in the said context as this prolific architect of the sublime equally included 

the classical in his work as, among others, Plate VIII of the Parere evinced (Fig. 6.2). 

This inclusion, as we saw, was part of his perception of ‘entire history’. 6 But his 

treatment of the classical at once revealed the instability of the classical itself. 7 This 

chapter demonstrates, among other things, that an instabilizing vector of reflection was 

handed down by the classical tradition itself. 

6.2. A Different Classic 

Like seventeenth-century classicists, eighteenth century Neo-Classicists drew on 

Aristotle’s Poetics, and to some extent his Rhetoric, in areas that required composition 

and design ranging from poetry and music to architecture, dance, and sculpture. 

Regardless of whether one had thoroughly read and glossed Aristotle, like Charles Le 

Brun (1619-1690), Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy (1611-1665), and Antonio Palomino 

(1655-1726) or not, the Aristotelian rules were received with equal firmness through the 

shop tradition. 8 What that tradition had handed down as ‘classical norm’ derived, 

through sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interpretations, from the notions of order, 

decorum (propriety), and other compositional concepts in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1367a, 

1404b 8-12, 1405a 10-14) and the three unities contained in the Poetics (1447b, 1448a). 

The Aristotelian conceptions were also handed down through several other interim 

authors like Democritus (460 BC-370 BC) and Lucretius (94 BC-49 BC) and 

6 Interpretation of Piranesi’s inclusion in the Neo-Classical circles of the mid-century was 

offered above, in Chapter 3, pp. 43-45. 

7 For an extensive discussion of this aspect of Piranesi’s approach to the classical, see Stanley 

Allen, “Piranesi and Duchamp: The Fictional Present,” Pratt Journal of Architecture 2 (1988): 55-58. 

8 Charles Le Brun, “L’expression des passions & autres rences,” The Expression of the 

Passions, trans. Julien Philipe (1668; Paris: Editions dale, 1994); Charles-Alphonse Du Fresnoy, De 

Arte graphica. The art of painting, trans. J. Dryden (1668; London: Bernard Lintot, 1773); Antonio 

Palomino, Theórica de la pintura (1715; Madrid: Lucas Antonio Bedmar, 1988). 

120

determined the continuity of the discourse on classicism in the architectural sphere. 9 

What set the eighteenth century apart from the previous centuries, however, was the 

additional availability of and importance attached to two ancient works. These 

comprised for one, the availability of Vitruvius in readable, annotated editions and 

translations. Vitruvius had assimilated the Aristotelian norms of classicism fully into the 

discourse of architecture and demonstrated the mode of their practicability (De arch. 

Book V: IV C. 3). Equally significant for our purposes, however, is the importance 

increasingly attached in the eighteenth century to Longinus’ first century AD On the 

Sublime. 

Le Roy’s alerting to errors that might deter from sublimity for example, derived 

from Longinus, whose book began with an analysis of faults. 10 Fundamental terms such 

as ‘greatness’, ‘strength’, ‘nobility’, and ‘dignity’ which Kant, Burke, Piranesi, and 

others employed in the discussion of the sublime and in distinguishing it from the 

beautiful, equally owed to Longinus (On sub. 1.1, 5, 9.2-3, 12.3 et passim). These terms 

could of course be found in Aristotle and Vitruvius (Poet. 1447b, 1448a; Rhet. 1361b 

12, 1393a 26, 1408a 7; De arch. Book V: IV C. 3, Book I: II C. 3-7). Longinus too, had 

incorporated elements of the Aristotelian tradition. 11 But in Longinus they had become, 

beyond terms, essential concepts in the appreciation of creative or imaginative work that 

so excelled as to warrant deviation from the rule, and were assimilated in the eighteenth 

century into the domain of architectural and visual works. In the course of the 

eighteenth century, roughly speaking, Aristotle was going to come to be identified with 

classicism and the ‘beautiful’ while Longinus was going to serve as conceptual and 

validating source for a sphere of design that underscored freedom from rules, which 

would yield the ‘sublime’. 

A qualification is in order, however—one articulated by Piranesi’s near 

contemporaries themselves: they were not content with the rendition of Longinus’ 

hypsous as ‘sublime’ and in their discussion of the translation of the term into the 

9 For Aristotelian conceptions in Democritus and Lucretius, see Hermann Diels, and Walter 

Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951), 68B125; Lucretius, De 

Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things, trans. W. D. H. Rouse (London: William Heinemann, 1975; 

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 3.94, 4.26. 

10 Longinus, On the Sublime, trans. W. H. Fyfe, in Aristotle, The Poetics. Longinus, On the 

Sublime. Demetrius, On Style, pp. 3-5. References to this work will be henceforward indicated in 

parentheses in the text. 

11 For Aristotelian conceptions in Longinus see Coulter, The Literary Microcosm, p. 18. 

121

vernacular, they also generated definitions of the term: finding ‘sublime’ too narrow for 

rendering the original term, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote that, “Longinus 

treats of animated, empassioned, energetic, or, if you will, elevated writing […]. His 

hypsous when translated ‘sublimity’ deceives the English reader by substituting an 

etymology for a translation.” 12 Similarly René Rapin had written in 1701 in his “Du 

grand ou du sublime dans les moeurs et dans les différentes conditions des homes” (On 

the grand or the sublime in the mores and the different conditions of men): ‘I make this 

sublime consist of the highest summit of perfection, which is the supreme stage of 

excellence in each condition’. 13 In either case, Longinus’ term was identified with an 

excellence of design and composition in the grand style. These discussions demonstrate 

not only the importance attached to Longinus in Piranesi’s culture throughout Western 

Europe, but also offer definitions of the sublime in terms of energy, elevation, highness, 

grandness, and excellence as the concept had been taken over from Longinus. 

6.3. A “Disposition” for the Sublime 

About a year before Piranesi published Parere Plate VIII, in 1766 Kant had 

published his Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime. In this early, 

pre-critical work, the philosopher examined the two concepts under four thematic 

headings: ‘Of the Distinct Objects of the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime’, ‘Of the 

Attributes of the Beautiful and Sublime in Man in General’, ‘Of the Distinction of the 

Beautiful and Sublime in the Interrelations of the Two Sexes’, and ‘Of National 

Characteristics, so far as They Depend upon the Distinct Feeling of the Beautiful and 

Sublime’. Evidently, Kant conceived of the beautiful and sublime fundamentally as the 

psychological capacity in the viewer to perceive these qualities, just as at the beginning 

of the century, Rapin had discussed the term in the context of his study of human mores 

and dispositions and argued its stronger presence in certain cultures than in others. 

Indeed Kant admitted that beauty or sublimity were characteristics prompted by the 

12 William Wordsworth, “Letter to J. Fletcher,” Letters of the Wordsworth Family, vol. II, ed. W. 

Knight (1787-1849; 1907), p. 250. 

13 René Rapin, “Du grand ou du sublime dans les moeurs et dans les différentes conditions des 

hommes,” Œuvres, vol. III (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1701; 1709), p. 446. 

122

object and its physical features. 14 Yet beauty or sublimity might be but non-existent 

except for the viewer’s “capacity” of feeling for it. Thus “the feeling of the sublime” 

and “the feeling of the beautiful” comprised a “capacity” inherent in some persons by 

which they were able to perceive the beauty or the sublimity in the object. Primary, 

therefore, was viewer capacity: “The various feelings,” wrote Kant, “of enjoyment or of 

displeasure rest not so much upon the nature of the external things that arouse them as 

upon each person’s own disposition to be moved by these to pleasure or pain” 

(Observations, 45). 

In 1757, Burke in his A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the 

Sublime and Beautiful had similarly granted some objects the capacity to evoke the 

feeling of the sublime. Such an object was, according to Burke, “a source of the 

sublime; that is, it [is] productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of 

feeling” (45-47). Though Burke had conceived of the capacity to apprehend the sublime 

as innate to the human mind, thus as something which all persons were capable of 

feeling when they encountered a certain kind of object, nevertheless the sublime, he 

maintained, did not actualize until a viewer perceived such an object and felt its 

sublimity (Inquiry, 35, 55). There are considerable differences between Burke’s and 

Kant’s views on the topic, attributable to differences between British empiricism and 

continental rationalism in the eighteenth century. But both of these philosophers’ works 

were part of an eighteenth-century paradigm that attributed substantial formative power 

to the viewer’s mental attributes, which resonated in Kant’s notion of the “disposition to 

be moved.” We may surmise that this attribution of the capacity to perceive the sublime 

derived from the now popular Longinus, who had claimed that, “Sublimity is the echo 

of a noble mind” (On Sub. 9. C. 2-3). 15 

Eighteenth-century architects as well as artists were in fact experimenting with 

the visual-technical implications of the psychological concept of “disposition.” They 

had translated the concept into the spatial practice of perspective and vista as an 

essential way to generate particular views of beauty or sublimity. 16 Eighteenth-century 

14 For Kant’s claims see Israel Knox, The Aesthetic Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer 

(New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978; Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978), p. 56. 

15 Also see Coulter, The Literary Microcosm, p. 18; and see the sections in Chapter 2 above, on 

Le style c’est l’homme même. 

16 Piranesi’s persistent pursuit of study with prominent masters of the perspective technique 

pretty much demonstrates the point of this research into vista: see Chapter 3, pp. 27-41 above. See 

Murray, Piranesi and the Grandeur of Ancient Rome, p. 8; Penny, Piranesi, p. 5; Wilton-Ely, Mind and 

123

landscape architecture, for example, is fertile ground for locating instances of 

implementation of the philosophical concept of dis-position as the concrete positioning 

of the viewer to lend vista and thus establish the circumstances for the perception of 

beauty or sublimity. The exedra—open-air sites for sitting in order to contemplate a 

view of built or natural environment—that are deployed throughout eighteenth-century 

gardens are a case in point. The bench, for example, set across the river ‘Styx’ in the 

Elysian Fields of the Stowe Gardens near London set the perspective upon Kent’s 1734 

Temple of British Worthies which the thoughtful viewer was to pursue for the 

contemplation of national history (Fig. 6.3). 17 Let us bring in, then, two pairs of further 

examples involving Piranesi for this assimilation of human “disposition” into spatial 

language in order to demonstrate how the eighteenth century put “dis-position” to work 

in the drawing of architecture with an eye to the distinction between beautiful and 

sublime. 

Figure 6.8. William Kent, Temple of British Worthies and the River Styx, viewed in 2005 from bench set 

across the river: by the Temple of Ancient Virtue 

Art, p. 10; Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, pp. 1-3, 9, 32n.6, 8, 20; Richard Wendorf, 

“Piranesi’s Double Ruin,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34:2 (2001): 163, 171-72. 

p. 441n.13. 

17 For an interpretation of the Stowe Gardens, see Augustyn, “Subjectivity in the Fictional Ruin,” 

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Fig. 6.4 and 6.5 show the respective renditions of the Ponte Salario in Rome by 

Giuseppe Vasi and Piranesi. The primary difference between Piranesi’s representation 

and Vasi’s is achieved by shift of perspective and framing. A cursory comparison of the 

drawings in Fig. 6.4 and 6.5 indicates Vasi’s picturesque quality while Piranesi is 

achieving a different effect, far from anything we might term ‘picturesque’. Vasi fixed 

the vanishing point of the scenery at the height of a viewer looking at the scene from a 

spot this side of the river so as to position the viewer isocephalus with a human figure 

Figure 6.9. Giuseppe Vasi, Ponte Salario, Magnificenze di Roma Antica e Moderna, 1754 

Figure 6.10. Ponte Salario, Vedute, 1754 

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standing near the horizon line. 18 This viewer of average height is standing up on the 

slope at whose foot the humans in the foreground of the picture are located. Vasi’s 

viewer, we may surmise, is standing flush with the ground of the bridge accessing the 

ancient tower. This characteristic lends human dimension to the picture. Similarly, the 

horizon line cuts across the point connecting the end of the bridge and the grounds of 

the tower, once again emphasizing the point of human access to the ancient architectural 

work. In fact, a horse cart is about to mount the bridge for the crossing, and it seems not 

at all an arduous crossing. Vasi’s framing is panoramic, moreover, including humans 

and a built structure this side of the river—where we, the implied viewer of average 

height, stand in the vicinity of other humans in serene pastoral existence. The built 

structure in the forefront to the right recalls the illustration in Laugier’s Essai (1753), of 

Vitruvius’ “rustic hut” (Fig. 6.6) which the ancient Roman architect had described as 

Figure 6.6. Marc-Atoine Laugier, Rustic Hut, detail, Essai, 1753 

18 Samuel Y. Edgerton’s definition of horizon line isocephaly runs as follows: “Horizon line 

isocephaly describes the phenomenon whereby, if we see other persons standing on the same plane as 

ourselves, the apparent diminution in the size of more distant figures begins with the feet; the heads of all 

figures standing on the same level as the viewer are always seen aligned with his own head on the 

common horizon.” The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York, Evanston, San 

Francisco, London: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 26. Also see his pp. 42-49. 

126

the first human dwelling (De arch. Book II: I C.), and which referred to the functional 

principles of nature that provided the base of architecture. 19 In the illustration to Laugier 

(Fig. 5.1), the architectural Muse is pointing at the hut, the origin of architecture, as she 

leans on the ‘present’, the building details indicative of eighteenth-century architectural 

styles and stylistic components. 

Fig. 6.7 indicates the isocephalus perspective construction of Vasi’s rendition 

that depicts a scene of human proportion, assimilating the historical artefacts into the 

natural order of the present. Vasi’s drawing belongs to the category of the ‘beautiful’. It 

is like Kent’s vista upon the Temple of British Worthies which too, Kant and Burke 

would claim, prompted the perception of the ‘beautiful’. “The sight of flower-strewn 

meadows, valleys with winding brooks and covered with grazing flocks” is beautiful, as 

in Vasi’s drawing, and “the description of Elysium” is beautiful as in Kent’s Temple, by 

Kant’s terms (Observations, 47). Burke’s description, “Beauty should shun the right 

line, yet deviate from it insensibly,” defines the softly rolling hills and shore line in 

Vasi: “beauty should be light and delicate” (Inquiry, 74). 

Figure 6.7. Perspective construction of Vasi’s Ponte Salario 

19 For more information about Laugier’s Essai see Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise, pp. 

46-47; Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and Designer, p. 36. See also Chapter 5, pp. 89-90 above. 

127

Piranesi (Fig. 6.5), by contrast, raises the structure of the Ponte onto a plane 

above the one where the hypothetical viewer is standing. The bridge and the tower 

become imposing and elusive structures far above us. The placement of the vanishing 

point in Piranesi’s drawing is conducive to the effect of heightening (Fig. 6.8): aside 

from the heightening of the pictured object he achieves by the particular placement of 

the perspective by which the implied viewer is standing much below the architectural 

object, Piranesi’s framing too, focuses on the Ponte to the exclusion of nearly all else. 

Figure 6.8. Perspective construction of Piranesi’s Ponte Salario 

In other words, Piranesi’s rendition is not panoramic like Vasi’s. The ‘heightening’ thus 

achieved by the double action of perspective-placement and narrowed cadre effects a 

surplus that is absent in Vasi’s rendition. The narrowing further enables the articulating 

of shadow and light. At play in Vasi’s rendition too, shadow and light there appeared as 

natural features embedded in the panoramic view juxtaposing nature and art (art: 

architecture in its different stylistic and historical varieties). In Piranesi, the play of light 

and shadow bear as it were unnatural, even supra-natural effect. 20 “Mere light is too 

20 For the conception of supra-natural, see Meyer Howard Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 

Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, 

1973), pp. 65-70. 

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common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind,” wrote Burke, “and without a 

strong impression nothing can be sublime. […] A quick transition from light to 

darkness, or from darkness to light, has yet a greater effect. But darkness is more 

productive of sublime ideas than light” (Inquiry, 67-68). “Quick transition” between 

light and darkness is characteristic of Piranesi’s drawings as is observable in Fig. 2.4 

and 3.2 and all his interior drawings. The alteration between dark and light is striking 

enough a feature of his oeuvre to have given rise to two poems by Hans Magnus 

Enzensberger. 21 Again, Burke devotes particular attention to this feature of the sublime. 

The context of his discussion is clearly architectural: 

all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the sublime, ought rather to be dark and 

gloomy, and this for two reasons; the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions is known by 

experience to have a greater effect on the passions than light. The second is, that to make an 

object very striking, we should make it as different as possible from the objects with which we 

have been immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building, […] to make the 

transition thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest light, to as much darkness as is 

consistent with the uses of architecture (Inquiry, 68-69). 

Far from participating in the contented rustic labor Vasi’s human figures are 

engaged in, the human figures in Piranesi’s drawing are worn-out toilers (Fig. 6.9) 

much like the inmates of the dark prisons depicted in the Carceri series (Fig. 6.10) 22 

whom Christadler aptly described as ‘minute, faceless-masked.’ 23 Distinguishing 

between beautiful and sublime in terms of human instincts, Burke identified self- 

preservation as the primary instinct; described its manifestation as “pain” felt in the face 

of “danger,” and termed its ultimate effect ‘sublime’ (Inquiry, 45). Piranesi’s human 

figures in the Ponte, like those in the Carceri, are toiling for mere self-preservation and 

are identifiable in Burkean terms as creating the effect of the sublime. Piranesi’s bridge 

is accessible perhaps by hard physical effort; its steepness is foreboding. The cart 

setting out up the bridge faces no easy ride. As in Vasi’s, there is too a hut on the lower 

right hand side, but this one poses no allusion to the eighteenth-century conception of 

the Vitruvian hut. It is low, dark, grotto-like: grotesque. Vasi’s picturesque countryside 

has turned infernal in Piranesi. 

21 On Enzensberger’s Piranesi poems, see W. S. Sewell, “‘Dunkel hell dunkel’ Enzensberger’s 

Two Piranesi Poems,” Festschrift for E.W. Herd, ed. August Obermayer; T. E. Carter (Dunedin, N.Z.: 

Dept. of Ger., University of Otago, 1980), pp. 238-50. 

22 For a discussion of the human figures in the Carceri, see Augustyn, “Subjectivity in the 

Fictional Ruin,” p. 450. 


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Figure 6.9 Human figures in Piranesi’s Ponte Salario 

Figure 6.10. Human figures in Piranesi’s Plate VII, The Drawbridge, Carceri d’Invenzione, 1760 

130

The publication date of both Vasi’s and Piranesi’s drawings are 1754. As 

Piranesi studied with Vasi in the early 1740s, 24 he most likely knew the latter’s drawing 

and re-worked it, transforming a ‘beautiful’ drawing into a ‘sublime’ one. According to 

Legrand, Vasi and Piranesi split paths upon the former’s declaration that, ‘You are too 

much of a painter, my friend, to be an engraver’. 25 In re-working Vasi’s drawing, 

Piranesi may have been making a point directed at him by ‘improving’ on his former 

master’s work. But Piranesi appears to have engaged rather systematically in such 

revision of others’ drawings as our next example below will demonstrate. 26 

In fact, the same observations may be made in a comparison of Duflos’ rendition 

of the Basilica of Maxentius and Piranesi’s drawing of the same (Fig. 6.11, 6.13). 

Unlike Vasi’s of the Ponte, Duflos’ does not invoke the picturesque, however. It rather 

constitutes a faithful rendition of classical structure in its symmetry and proportion, 

which characteristic too, was included in the definition of the beautiful. Duflos was 

continuing the classicism in architectural drawing that had been established in Alberti’s 

fifteenth-century culture, as may be observed in Etienne Dupérac’s (1525–1604) 1575 

drawing of the basilica (Fig. 6.12) which had been published in his I vestigi 

dell’antichità di Roma. 27 In Duflos, the viewer is again, as in Vasi, on a par with the 

architectural object, with the distribution of shadow and light following a natural (or, 

rational) order (Fig. 6.11). In its emphasis on classical symmetry and proportion, 

Duflos’ drawing concurs with not only Kant and Burke’s descriptions of the beautiful, 

but also Vitruvius’: 

There is nothing to which an architect should devote more thought than to the exact proportions 

of his building with reference to a certain part selected as the standard. After the standard of 

symmetry has been determined, and the proportionate dimensions adjusted by calculations, it is 

next the part of wisdom to consider the nature of the site, or questions of use or beauty, and 

modify the plan by diminutions or additions in such a manner that these diminutions or additions 

in the symmetrical relations may be seen to be made on correct principles, and without detracting 

at all from the effect (De arch., Book VI: II C. 1). 

24 On Piranesi’s work in Vasi’s studio, see Ficacci’s introduction “The Discovery of Rome out 

of the Spirit of Piranesi,” to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, pp. 14-15, and above, Chapter 3, p. 29. 

25 See Legrand in Notice historique which was also published in Nouvelles de l’estampe, No. 5, 

1969, p. 194. Also see Wilton-Ely, Mind and Art, p. 12. 

26 Oechslin too, takes up this phenomenon in Piranesi and discusses it in terms of the function of 

drawing in Piranesi as “explanation”: “Piranesi to Libeskind: Explaining by Drawing.” 

27 Rome, 1575; 1606. 

131

Figure 6.11. François Philotée Duflos, Basilica of Maxentius, Varie Vedute, 1748 

Figure 6.12. Etienne Dupérac, Basilica of Maxentius, I Vestigi dell’Antichità di Roma, 1575 

Figure 6.13. Basilica of Maxentius, Antichità, 1756 

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In the Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant identified first “two kinds of beauty: free 

beauty (pulchritude vaga) [and] dependent beauty (pulchritude adhaerens).” Proportion 

emerged as the physical feature of dependent beauty: 

[…] human beauty (i.e. of a man, a woman, or a child), the beauty of a horse, or a building (be it 

church, palace, arsenal, or summerhouse) presupposes a concept of the purpose which 

determines what the thing is to be, and consequently a concept of its perfection; it is therefore 

adherent beauty. 28 

In proportion, claimed Burke, “there is nothing to interest the imagination” (75). In fact, 

like its sixteenth-century ancestor (Fig. 6.12) Duflos’ rendition is a mere documentary 

of classical norm, as the more recent building to the right is demonstrated, in this 

drawing, to comply with that norm. 

Piranesi’s drawing of the Maxentius bears features of sublimity comparable to 

those of his Ponte, where the viewer had been placed at such low level vis-à-vis the 

horizon line that the architectural structures seemed imposing in their dimensions. The 

same technic is used in the Maxentius (Fig. 6.14 and 6.15). The absence of isocephaly in 

1978), pp. 81-82. 

Figure 6.14. Perspective construction of Duflos’ Basilica of Maxentius 

28 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. C. Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1790; 

133

Figure 6.15. Perspective construction of Piranesi’s Basilica of Maxentius 

Piranesi’s perspective constructs renders the architectural object larger than human scale 

would warrant. This placement of the viewer equally serves to establish a depth or 

infinity effect to the picture and underscores its three-dimensionality. Both Kant and 

Burke list the effect of infinity among those that stimulate the feeling of the sublime 

(Observations, 48-50, Inquiry, 62). As in most other drawings by Piranesi, here again 

we see the chiaroscuro effect created especially by the positioning of light and shadow 

on the cassettes on the inner surface of the arches of the Maxentius. But Piranesian 

chiaroscuro generates more shadows than light, which creates darker spaces and a 

strong feeling of the sublime. 

Thus eighteenth-century architects experimented with perspective. The stance 

from which one elected to view an object bore, of course, technical results and artistic 

effects. The eighteenth century read these results and effects in psychological terms 

expressing the artist’s “disposition.” The architectural drawing of extant buildings, 

particularly the ruins of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, were the prominent framework 

for the deployment of this particular conception of “disposition” which spelled the 

complete coalescence of technic and architect’s or artist’s character, and their 

distribution as beautiful or sublime. Thus too, we obtain a historically more truthful clue 

as to how, in fact, Leclerc’s ‘The style is the man himself’ was put to practice in its own 

time: this was style not as a transparent indicator of its creator’s psychological make-up 

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as found in Abrams and other twentieth-century critics; but as a situated eye, a capacity 

to see in the architectural or other object, a dimension beyond (classical) beauty. Given 

Piranesi’s vocation, the situation of this eye was defined as a historical situation. The 

etching Avonzo del Tempio della Concordia from the Antichità (1756, Fig. 6.16) may be 

taken as a variant of his Basilica of Maxentius and as yet another commentary on 

Duflos’ rendition of the Basilica. Piranesi’s Concordia participates perhaps not too 

much in the sublime, except for the coalescence of building with sky at the far end of 

the temple, the slightness of the human figures, and the swift alterations of dark and 

light. 29 It demonstrates, however, the grounding of the difference of his vista so as to 

render each drawing a ‘comprehensive system of historical allusion’. 30 

Figure 6.16. Avonzo del Tempio della Concordia, Antichità, I, 1756 

29 For a detailed description and discussion of the drawing, see Andrew Robison, “Preliminary 

Drawings for Piranesi’s Early Architectural Fantasies,” Master Drawings 15: 4 (1977): 387-401. Robison 

relates Piranesi’s Concordia to his series Grotteschi of 1744-1745. Being sepulchral, the Concordia is 

relevant to the sublime. 

30 Maurizio Calvesi, “Nota ai ‘grotteschi’ o capricci di Piranesi,” Piranesi e la cultura 

antiquaria, gli antecedenti e il contesto: Atti del convegno, 14-17 Novembre 1979, ed. Anna Lo Bianco 

(Rome: Multigrafica, 1983), p. 135. 

135

6.4. Sublime characteristics 

Descriptions of the sublime by Kant and Burke almost read as ecphrastic prose 

glossing Piranesi’s drawings. 31 In Kant the sublime is, “Formless, boundless, chaotic in 

nature of might and magnitude.” It is “the violation of form in nature” and must “always 

be great” (Observations, 47-48). 32 Fig. 6.17 and 6.18 from the two Carceri series of 

1745 and 1760 are among those illustrating Kantian ‘formlessness’, ‘boundlessness’ 

that indicate the breakdown of classical form. The quality of ‘chaos’ present in these 

two plates, at first glance implies the antithesis of classicism. The architectonic in the 

plate in Fig. 6.18 would however, upon prolonged viewing, show a very co-ordinated 

classical structure. But Piranesi’s particular—low—placement of the sight point, the 

play of shadow and light render dominant not classical form but the human and 

Figure 6.17. Title page, Invenzioni capricci Figure 6.18. Plate II, Carceri d’Invenzione, 

di carceri, 1745 1760 

31 For a definition of ecphrasis, see Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary 

Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958, 

1987), p. 18n.34. For a discussion of ecphrasis in eighteenth-century drawings see Augustyn, 

“Subjectivity in the Fictional Ruin,” pp. 443-44. A discussion of the relationship between ecphrastic 

drawing and Oechslin’s conception of “drawing as explanation” could make up a chapter in itself. 

32 Also see Knox, The Aesthetic Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, pp. 54-58. 

136

historical debris in the forefront. Stafford maintains that such “obscurely jumbled” 

architectural phenomena await “Piranesi’s subsequent encyclopedic” ordering to 

demonstrate the meaning they have “accrued over time.” 33 

The feeling of the sublime “is sometimes accompanied with a certain dread, or 

melancholy,” writes Kant, “in some cases merely with quiet wonder [.]” Therefore “a 

great height is just as sublime as a great depth, except the latter is accompanied with the 

sensation of shuddering, the former with one of wonder” (Observations, 47-49). The 

reader may be referred to Fig. 2.4 for the sense of “dread” and “shuddering” at the sight 

of “great depth,” which, as we saw, De Quincey too had glimpsed. 34 At first glance Fig. 

6.19 casts a view of classical order. The placement of the sight point, the notion of 

a vantage point towering above even monumental towers, however, robs the orderly of 

any sense of classical beauty and yields “wonder” at the least. 

Figure 6.19. Frontispiece II, oblique perspective from Ichnographia, detail, Campo, 1762 

33 Stafford, “Bare versus Prismatic Style,” p. 353. 

34 See Chapter 2, pp. 15-17. 

137

Kant continues by giving natural examples of the sublime like “the sight of a 

mountain whose snow-covered peak rises above clouds, the description of a raging 

storm, or Milton’s portrayal of the infernal kingdom [in his Paradise Lost], arouse 

enjoyment but with horror” (Observations, 47). It is this ‘horror’ that comprises the 

effect of the sublime. Burke describes the sublime as follows: 

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in 

any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to 

terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind 

is capable of feeling (Inquiry, 45-47). 

Burke goes on to describe the sublime by its concrete physical appearance: 

“sublime objects are vast in their dimensions […]; the great, rugged and negligent […]; 

the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates it often makes a strong 

deviation […]; the great ought to be dark and gloomy […]; the great ought to be solid, 

and even massive” (Inquiry, 101-102). Piranesi’s drawings of the Ponte and Maxentius’ 

Basilica clearly fall in the category of Burkean and Kantian sublime, as does the 

structure depicted in Fig. 3.31. Like Kant’s mountain whose peak is invisible, the 

human eye is dreadfully unable to glimpse the zenith or closure to this structure. We 

find in it the Burkean “right line” but—again as in Burke—with ‘strong deviations’ that 

shun the right angle and result in an added sense of steepness, height, and 

inaccessibility. The effect of “terror” is the direct source of the sublime and yields a 

version of aesthetic pleasure in Burke: “[…] terror is a passion which always produces 

delight” (Inquiry, 41). Like Kant, Burke identifies Milton, particularly his description of 

Death in Paradise Lost, as a prime example of the sublime. Burke could be describing a 

plate, such as that in Fig. 2.4, from Piranesi’s Carceri: “In his [Milton’s] description all 

is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the last degree” (Inquiry, 51). 

Burke also commented on Milton’s description of Satan: “the mind is hurried out of 

itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which affect because they are crowded 

and confused.” “[I]n nature, dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on 

the fancy to form the grander passions.” While the entire Carceri series are replete with 

the sense of “terror” and “obscurity,” Fig. 6.17 and 6.18 particularly illustrate Burke’s 

description. The Burkean “vastness” and “magnificence” and the Kantian “eternity” and 

“profundity,” on the other hand, are felt, again, especially in Campo (Fig. 6.19) and 

138

Antichità (Fig. 3.31) while “light” effects and “sudden” alterations between light and 

darkness, white and black are seen in all Piranesi drawings. 

As evinced already in such titles as “Magnitude in Building” and “Light in 

Building,” Burke’s examples of the sublime, even entire chapters of his discussion 

thereof, directly derive from architecture (Inquiry, 49-73). In “Magnitude in Building” 

of 1757 (Inquiry, 61), Burke wrote as if he were contemplating Piranesi’s Plate VII 

(Fig. 2.4) from Invenzioni capricci di carceri (1745): “Greatness of dimension is a 

powerful cause of the sublime.” By playing on scale, Piranesi magnified architectural 

elements, which becomes more striking in comparison with classical human scale. 

“Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length strikes least.” Again, 

the effect of extension in both height and depth is observable in Carceri, where in order 

to obtain the effect of verticality, spaces have been extended upward and downward, 

even beyond the margins of the plate: “the perpendicular has more force in forming the 

sublime, than an inclined plane.” Although the figure of the drawbridge seems, at first 

glance, an inclined element, by lifting it up, Piranesi was able to break its inclined 

appearance. “[H]eight is less grand than depth,” wrote Burke, which is again found in 

Plate VII: by chiaroscuro, Piranesi etched the structures at the background lightly and 

the figures at the foreground in bold in order to create the effect of depth, and rendered 

depth dominant by emphasizing the chiaroscuro. Finally, Burke writes that, “the effects 

of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger,” which may be discerned in especially 

the stones of the arches in Plate VII. Apart from the fact of these stones stimulating 

sublimity by their unrefined appearance, they also reflect the remoteness of past time 

and thus reflect yet another sublime character: we read in Kant that the remoter the 

ancient object is in time, the more ruined the ruins of past time, the greater the degree of 

sublimity (Observations, 49, 50). 

6.5. Beautiful Greece and Modern Sublime 

Laugier had included the illustration of the Vitruvian hut (Fig. 5.1 and 6.6) in a 

part of his Essai that discussed the origins of architecture. This hut, he claimed, had 

derived from nature, in a culture and at a time in history that was close to nature. We 

have seen that like Winckelmann, Laugier argued that the origins of not only modern 

architecture but also Roman architecture whence the modern derived, stemmed from 

139

Greek architecture. 35 Setting the standard for classical norm, Greek architecture was by 

definition beautiful, as it comprised the unmediated mimetic duplication of natural 

order. 36 Similarly Winckelmann identified Greece as providing the root of Roman and 

later classical art and architecture. The remainders at Paestum in Naples, he claimed, 

were clearly Greek, as they bore ‘noble aura’. 37 In his Gedanken published in 1755, he 

described Greek architecture by its character of “edle Einfalt und stille Grösse” (24) 

(noble simplicity and serene greatness), and maintained that Rome, in copying Greece, 

had degraded the qualities of ‘beauty’ of the original. This claim on behalf of Greek 

origins, in Winckelmann as in Laugier, served to assign secondary status to Roman 

architecture and its modern versions as well as explain their difference: the Greeks had 

copied nature, and they had done so well. The Romans had copied the Greeks, thus 

were removed from the original source—nature—and they had not copied well. 

‘Beauty’ belonged with Greece. 

The defense of Roman architecture thus had to attach itself to a concept and a 

character other than ‘beauty’. Its character, as is familiar to us from myriad architectural 

writings of the past, was regarded as public and as having grandeur: Roman architecture 

was monumental. Rome clearly came rather late in history—than Greece, for example. 

Its architecture’s difference from Greece demanded explanation, which, in eighteenth- 

century terms essentially meant identifying a historically precedent culture from which 

it derived. 38 In the case of Rome, moreover, there was the underlying stratum of 

Etruscan architecture and artefacts of which the eighteenth century, as progenitor of the 

discipline of archaeology, was aware. Thus a Piranesi argued that Roman architecture 

derived from the Etruscan, which in turn derived from the Egyptian: “The Roman and 

Tuscan were at first one and the same, the Romans learned architecture from the 

Tuscans, and made use of no other for many ages,” wrote Piranesi in his preface entitled 

“Apologetical Essay” (15). Piranesi was by no means alone in this view. Le Roy 

defended that the Greeks themselves had copied their monumental architecture from 

Egypt (Ruines, 13) and the Fransiscan Lodoli, as we saw, went even further and claimed 

35 See Chapter 5, pp. 89-90. 

36 See Laugier, Essai, p. 2. 

37 Winckelmann, Gedanken, p. 138. 

38 See Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. F. Kölln and J.P. Pettegrove 

(Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1951; 1979). 

140

that the Doric order ought to be re-named after its Egyptian origins and called the 

‘Egyptian order’ and that the Tuscan—by which Lodoli meant Etruscan—order had too 

been invented by Egyptians. 39 

The debate on origins of European architecture thus coalesced with the 

contemporaneous philosophical debate on the relationship/difference between the 

beautiful and the sublime. Monumental Egyptian architecture was sublime in its supra- 

human scale, its impenetrability, and in the fact that in ancientness it surpassed anything 

known of Antiquity. Piranesi was going to represent his notion of historical derivation 

in a drawing of 1750 (Fig. 5.12), in which the grandeur of Romanesque architecture was 

shown to lean on the even grander Egyptian pyramid. The two structures were depicted 

as inseparable; the Romanesque as offspring of the Egyptian and a mere fragment but 

for the support provided by the older building. The words from Le Roy we saw Piranesi 

etched in Plate VIII of the Parere had identified monumental architecture as the sublime 

art and copying—that very craft in which Winckelmann claimed Romans had failed— 

he had reduced to ‘craft’. There was indeed room for this craft in eighteenth-century 

culture as Kantian and Burkean theorizing on the ‘beautiful’ and as so much classicist 

architecture of the period evinces. And Piranesi seems to have acknowledged it in so far 

as his copying, say, of Vasi’s Ponte Salario demonstrates that. His aim, however, was 

the sublime as this provided, via an Egyptian detour circumventing Greece, freedom 

from imitation of classicist norm toward inventing the modern. This invention took on 

the form of the capriccio, which has also been described as ‘the poetics of the ruin’. 40 

39 Lodoli’s opinion has been handed down by Andrea Memmo in his Elementi, pp. 296-97n.48. 

40 Augustyn, “Subjectivity in the Fictional Ruin,” p. 433. 

141

CHAPTER 7 

EPILOGUE 

This thesis has argued that Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a significant figure in 

the history of architecture who was one of the major forces behind the rise of modern 

scientific archaeology and history of architecture in the course of the eighteenth century. 

Since this argument contrasts sharply with the dominant perception of Piranesi as an 

eclectic, eccentric, unclassifiable architect who, though very productive, failed as an 

architect, the thesis had to first interpret existing misinterpretations of Piranesi’s work. 

This was conducted by a discussion of the sources of the negative perception of 

Piranesi, particularly generated by Romantic poets, novelists, and theorists. Piranesi’s 

work had been interpreted mostly through his life and psychological character. Oddly, 

though, there were no modern biographies of Piranesi. With the additional factor of the 

lack of systematic catalogues and chronologies of his work, it became necessary to 

delineate an architectural biography of the architect in order to arrive at a positive 

interpretation of his work. 

The chronology of Piranesi’s work demonstrates a career that begins by 

mastering existent forms and techniques of architectural drawing, which he then was 

going to refine toward a manner of drawing that was able to represent buildings at once 

architecturally, archaeologically, and historically. Piranesi’s biography also 

demonstrated that he participated in excavations as the ancient structures at 

Herculaneum, Pompeii, Tivoli, and Corneto were being discovered either for the first 

time or very early on in the process of their uncovering. 

The other vector of misinterpretations of Piranesi comprises issues rooted in 

Fletcher’s 1896 “Tree of Architecture.” Piranesi’s claim that Roman architecture 

derived not from the Greek but from the Etruscan, which derived from Egypt, caused 

him to be excluded from the standardized progress of architectural history in the west 

and to be interpreted as an aberration. In other words, Piranesi’s thesis is not 

comprehended even today by except for a few. Piranesi’s thesis involved the argument 

that the architecture and many cultural features of ancient Greece and Rome were not 

‘original’, but ‘derivative’ from older cultures. When Piranesi posited this argument, 

historical context was not prepared to accept such a privileging of the ‘East’: in the 

142

course of the eighteenth century, Egypt, along with the rest of the realm of the 

Ottomans, was being identified with the ‘East’ and the non-European. The view that 

was gaining ground was Winckelmann’s position that began European architectural 

history with Greece. The architecture-historical argument of Piranesi and his milieu was 

excluded from the mainstream in a political context in which alliances were being 

formed to seize and colonolize ‘eastern’ Egypt. 1 Piranesi’s thesis about architectural 

history ‘fell on deaf ears’. Eventually, however, though he was speaking against the 

rising mainstream, Piranesi was going to be interpreted as Orientalist by contemporary 

scholars following Edward Said. At the same time, as Winckelmann’s approach rooting 

the origin of Roman architecture in the Greek came to dominate the standard western 

view, the exclusion of Piranesi found more justification. 

In his classic article of 1965, “Utopia, the city and the Machine,” Lewis 

Mumford asked: “why did so many of the characteristic institutions of utopia first come 

to light in the ancient city?” 2 Contrary to contemporary critics, who attribute to Piranesi 

a utopianism defined as lofty idealism and fantasy, Mumford conceived of the utopian 

nature of the city as a mechanism that increasingly aimed at “universal conscription [of] 

powers” that would come under the command of political rule. 3 Piranesi seems to have 

grasped this nature of at least the city of Rome. What seems to have driven him to ‘dig 

deeper’ into Rome, to exhaust its vedute, and attain the complete map, was to grasp that 

magnificent machine of power as a whole. Rome was object of study for this architect 

who signed himself architetto veneziano. Rome seemed to hold the key to the 

mechanical order that was being created in eighteenth-century Europe, “based on 

quantitative measurements, indifferent to human qualities or purposes.” 4 Inquiring 

scientist, one can understand the attraction of the new ideology of science for Piranesi, 

and would even claim that he was entirely part and member of it, were it not for the 

ironic distance displayed in his every plate. 

1 For the details of this historical and political development, see Enver Ziya Kaval, Osmanlı 

Tarihi. V. Cilt: Nizam-ı Cedid ve Tanzimat Devirleri (1789-1856) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1947; 

1988), pp. 21-43. 

2 Lewis Mumford, “Utopia, The City and The Machine,” Daedalus 94 (1965): 271. 

3 Mumford, “Utopia, The City and The Machine,” p. 289. 

4 Mumford, “Utopia, The City and The Machine,” p. 289. 

143

1. Primary Works 

1.1. Works by Piranesi 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1.1.1. Piranesi’s Printed Works (Texts, Drawings, Etchings) 

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Alcune Vedute di Archi Trionfali ed altri monumenti 

inalzati da Romani parte de quali se veggono in Roma e parte per l’Italia, ed 

Incisi dal Cavalier Gio. Battista Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1748; 1785. 

---. Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo Descritte ed incise da Giovambattista 

Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1764. 

---. Antichità di Cora, Descritte ed Incise da Giovambattista Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 

1764. 

---. Antichità romane de’ tempi della repubblica e de’ primi imperatori, disegnate 

ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1748. 

---. Antiquités de la Grande Grèce, Aujourd’hui Royaume de Naples; Gravées par 

François Piranesi. Paris: n.p., 1837. 

---. Campus Martius Antiquae Urbis. Il Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma, Opera di G. 

B. Piranesi socio della real societa’ degli antiquari di Londra. Rome: n.p., 

1762; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Carceri, d’Invenzione. Rome: n.p., 1760. 

---. Catalogo delle Opere Date Finora alla Luce da Gio. Battista Piranesi. Rome: 

n.p.,1762. 

---. Colonna Antonina. A Series of Plates Representing the Column of Marcus Aurelius. 

Rome: n.p., 1776; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Colonna Eretta in Memoria dell’Apoteosi di Antonino Pio e Faustina sua Moglie, 

etc. Rome: n.p., 1779; Paris: n.p., 1837. 

---. De Romanorum Magnificentia et Architectura. Della magnificenza ed architettura 

de’romani opera di Gio Battista Piranesi socio della reale accademia degli 

antiquari di Londra. Rome: n.p., 1761. 

144

---. Descrizione e disegno dell’emissario del Lago Albano di Gio. Battista Piranesi. 

Rome: n.p., 1762. 

---. Di due Spelonche Ornate Dagli Antichi alla Riva del Lago Albano. Rome: n.p., 

1764; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Differentes vues de quelques restes de trois grands édifices qui subsistent encore 

dans le milieu de l’Ancienne Ville de Pesto, autrement Possidonia, etc. [Varie 

Vedute di Paestum]. Rome: n.p., 1778; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Dimostrazioni dell’Emis Sario del Lago Fucino. Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi desunte 

dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca, con un ragionamento apologetico 

in difesa dell’architettura Egizia e Toscana… Diverse manners of ornamenting 

chimneys… Differentes manières d’orner les cheminées… Rome: n.p., 1769; 

Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Selected Etchings. Eine Auswahl der Kupferstiche. Une 

Sélection des Eaux-fortes Luigi Ficacci. Ed. Luigi Ficacci. Trans. Bradley Baker 

Dick. Koln and New York: Taschen, 2001. 

---. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The Complete Etchings. Ed. Luigi Ficacci. Cologne 

and London: Taschen, 2005. 

---. I. B. Piranesii Lapides Capitolini, Sive, Fasti Consulares Triumphalesq(ue) 

Romanorum ab Urbe Condita usque ad Tiberium Caesarem. Rome: Typis 

Generoso Salomoni, 1762. 

---. Invenzioni capricci di carceri all’acqua forte datte il luce da Giovanni Buzard in 

Roma mercante al Corso. Rome: n.p., 1745. 

---. Le antichità romane. Rome: n.p., 1756. 

---. Le Rovine del Castello dell’Acqua Giulia Situato in Roma Presso S. Eusebio e 

Falsamente detto dell’Acqua Marcia Colla Dicharazione di uno de’Celebre 

Passi del Comentario Frontiniano e Sposizione della Maniera con cui gli 

Antichi Romani Distribuiuan le Acque per uso della Citta. Rome: Stamperia 

Generoso Salomoni, 1761. 

---. Lettere di giustificazione scritte a Milord Charlemont e al di lui Agenti di Roma 

dal Signor Piranesi socio della real societa’ degli antiquari di Londra intorno 

alla dedica della sua opera delle Antichita’ Rom. fatta allo stesso signor ed 

ultimamente soppressa. Intorno la Dedica della sua Opera delle Antichita 

Romane … Ultimamente Soppressa. Rome: n.p., 1757. Reprinted in Giovanni 

145

Battista Piranesi, The Polemical Works, Rome 1757, 1761, 1765, 1769. Ed. John 

Wilton-Ely. Farnborough: Gregg, 1972. 

---. Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette. With Opinions on Architecture, 

and a Preface to a New Treatise on the Introduction and Progress of the Fine 

Arts in Europe in Ancient Times. Introduction by John Wilton-Ely. Trans. 

Caroline Beamish and David Britt. Los Angeles and California: Getty Research 

Institute for the History of Art & the Humanities, 2002. 

---. Osservazioni di Gio Battista Piranesi sopra la lettre de M. Mariette aux auteurs de 

la Gazette Litteraire de l’Europe. Inserita nel Supplemento dell’istessa Gazzetta 

stampata Dimanche 4 Novembre MDCCLIV. E Parere su l’Architettura, con 

una Prefazione ad un nuovo trattato della introduzione e del progresso delle 

belle arti in Europa ne’ tempi antichi. Rome: n.p., 1765. 

---. Œuvres des Chevaliers Jean Baptiste et François Piranesi, qu’on vend Separement 

dans la Calcographie des Auteurs, Rüe Felice. Rome: n.p., 1792. 

---. Opere varie di architettura prospettive, grotteschi, antichità; inventate, ed incise 

da Giambattista Piranesi Architetto Veneziano … Raccolte da Giovanni 

Bouchard. Rome: n.p., 1750; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Pianta di Roma e del Campo Marzio. Rome: n.p., 1774; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Piranesi Compositions. Ed. Hector O. Corfiato. London: A. Tiranti, 1951. 

---. Prima Parte di Architetture, e Prospettive inventate ed incise da Gio. Batta. 

Piranesi Architetto Veneziano dedicate al Sig. Nicola Giobbe. Rome: Stamperia 

de’Fratelli Pagliarini, 1743. 

---. Raccolta di alcuni disegni del Barbieri da Cento detto il Guercino incisi in rame , e 

presentati al singolar merito del Sig. Tommaso Jenkins pittore, ed accademico 

di S. Luca, in atto di respetto e d’amicizia dall'architetto e suo coaccademico: 

Gio Battista Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1764. 

---. Raccolta di Varie Vedute di Roma si Anticha che Moderna Intagliate la Maggior 

Parte dal Celebre. Rome: n.p., 1752. 

---. The Polemical Works. Rome, 1757, 1761, 1765, 1769. John Wilton-Ely. 

Farnborough: Gregg, 1972. 

---. Trofei di Ottaviano Augusto Innalzati per la Vittoria ad Actium e Conquista 

dell’Egitto on vari altri ornamenti diligentemente ricavati dagli avanzi piu’ 

preziosi delle fabbriche antiche di Roma, utili a pittori, scultori ed architetti, 

designati ed incisi da Giambattista Piranesi, Architetto Veneziano. Rome: 

146

Stamperia di GiovanniGeneroso Salomoni, 1753; 1780; Paris: n.p., 1835. 

---. Trofeo o sia Magnifica Colonna Coclide di marmo composta di grossi macigni ove 

si veggono scolpite le due guerre daciche fatte da Traiano inalzata nel mezzo 

del gran Foro eretto al medesimo imperatore per ordine del Senato e Popolo 

Romano doppo i suoi trionfi. Ove si Veggono Scolpite le due Guerre Daciche. 

Rome: n.p., 1774; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna incise da Celebri Autori a Spese di 

Fausto Amidei. Rome: n.p., 1745. 

---. Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne ed Ornamenti Antichi 

Disegn. ed inc. dal Cav. Rome: n.p., 1778; Paris: n.p., 1836. 

---. Vedute di Roma, Disegnate ed Incise da Giambattista Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1762; 

1778; 1836. 

---, and Francesco Piranesi. Piranesi Vedute e Antichità di Tivoli. Ed. Vincenzo Conti. 

Rome: V. Conti, 1996. 

1.1.2. Catalogues of Exhibitions of Piranesi’s Work 

Associzione per le Arti “Francesco Francia.” Bologna, Palazzo di Re Enzo, 27 gennaio- 

24 febbraio 1963. Mostra di Incisioni di G. B. Piranesi. Catalogue. Ed. Maria 

Catelli Isola, Amalia Mezzetti and Silla Zamboni. Introduction by Stefano 

Bottari. Bologna: Edizioni Alfa, 1963. 

Batsford, B. T. A Catalogue of Prints of Views in Rome and Paestum by G.B. Piranesi: 

with an Introduction and 19 Illustrations. London: B.T. Batsford, 1913. 

Bertelli, Carlo. Piranesi. Incisioni, Rami, Legature, Architetture. Mostra Organizzata 

dalla Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, Venezia, 1978. Ed. 

Alessandro Bettagno. Vicenza: Pozza, 1978. 

Biblioteca Nacional. Giovanni Battista Piranesi en la Biblioteca Nacional. Estudio 

Preliminary Catalogue. Ed. Enrique Lafuente Ferrari. Madrid: Biblioteca 

Nacional, 1936. 

Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie. Gabinet Rycin. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 

Rysunki i Grafika. Katalog Wystawy Opracowali, Wieslaw Juszczak i Elzbieta 

Budzinska. Warszawa, 1967. 

Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris). Estampes. Piranèse. Exhibition Catalogue. Paris, 

147

1962. 

Blunt, Anthony. Maestri Romani del Sei e Settecento: Domenichino, Sacchi, Lanfranco, 

Bernini, Pietro da Cortona, Testa, Mola, Sassoferrato, Maratta, Panini, 

Piranesi. Introduction and Catalogue by Anthony Blunt. Florence: Alinari, 1980. 

British Museum. Department of Prints and Drawings. Giovanni Battista Piranesi: His 

Predecessors and His Heritage. An Exhibition Catalogue. London: British 

Museum, 1968. 

Byam Shaw, James. Maestri Veneti del Settecento. Introduction and Catalogue by 

James Byam Shaw. 2, Carlevaris, Canaletto, Zuccarelli, Pietro Longhi, 

Fontebasso, Capella, Francesco Guardi, Piranesi, Gio Domenico Tiepolo. 

Florence: Alinari, 1980. 

Carceri. Mole Adriana. Vedute di Roma. Castel Sant’Angelo. Catalogue. Ed. Calvesi, 

Maurizio. Rome, 1979. 

Collection of Maps and Views of Rome and its Environs. Wien: Lehmann, 1800-1888. 

Columbia University. Avery Memorial Architectural Library. Giovanni Battista 

Piranesi. Drawings and Etchings at Columbia University. An Exhibition at Low 

Memorial Library, March 21-April 14, 1972. New York: Arthur M. Sackler 

Foundation, 1972. 

Disegni di Giambattista Piranesi. Catalogue. Ed. Alessandro Bettagno; Prefazione di 

Rodolfo Pallucchini. Vicenza: N. Pozza, 1978. 

Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Illustrated Catalogue of an Exhibition, 

January 10, 1949, to March 19, 1949. New York: The Library, 1949. 

Etchings and Drawings. Boston and New York: Graphic Society, 1975. 

Exploring Rome: Piranesi and His Contemporaries. Catalogue. Ed. Cara D. Denison, 

Myra Nan Rosenfeld, and Stephanie Wiles. New York: Pierpont Morgan 

Library; Montréal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Cambridge and Mass.: 

MIT Press, 1993. 

Fantastic Architecture 1746. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1949. 

Focillon, Henri. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Ed. Maurizio Calvesi e Augusta 

Monferini. Traduzione di Giuseppe Guglielmi. A translation of “Giovanni- 

Battista Piranesi” and “Essai de Catalogue de l’œuvre de J.-B. 

Piranesi.” Bologna: Alfa, 1967. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Estampas do Gabinetto delle Stampe e dei Disegni da 

Biblioteca Municipal de Fermo. Ed. Anna Lo Bianco and Maria Chiara Leonari. 

148

Madrid: Calcografía Nacional, 2002. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Die Wahrnehmung von Raum und Zeit: Akten des 

Internationalen Symposiums, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 25. bis 26. Juni 1999. Ed. 

Corinna Höper, Jeannette Stoschek, Elisabeth Kieven. Marburg: Jonas, 2002. 

Giovanni-Battista Piranesi. Essai de Catalogue de Son Oeuvre. Catalogue. 

Ed. Henri Focillon. Paris: Libr. Renouard, H. Laurens, 1918. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Invenções, Caprichos, Arquitecturas, 1720-1778. Lisboa: 

Secretaria de Estado da Cultura, 1993. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Roma Magnífica: Obras de la Fundación Antonio 

Mazzotta. Catalogue. Ed. Raffaella Resch. Milan: Mazzotta, 2001. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Stampe dalle Collezioni Private Fermane: Fermo, Chiesa 

del Carmine dal 19 Luglio al 23 Novembre 2003. Catalogue. Ed. with notes by 

Sandro Pazzi. Fermo: Comune di Fermo, Regione Marche, 2003. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1720-1778. lo. Prag: Galerie, 1972. 

Giovanni Battista e Francesco Piranesi. Introduction by Maurizio Calvesi. Rome: 

Calcografia Nazionale, 1967. 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi e la Veduta a Roma e a Venezia Nella Prima del 

Settecento. Catalogue. Ed. Michele Cordaro, Alida Moltedo, Mario Gori Sassoli. 

Rome: Palombi, 1991. 

Grassimuseum. Piranesi: Faszination und Ausstrahlung: Begleitpublikation zur 

Ausstellung im Grassimuseum Leipzig. Leipzig: Das Museum, 1994. 

Il Settecento a Roma, Mostra promossa dall’Associazione Amici dei Musei di Roma, 

19 March-31 May 1959. Rome, 1959. 

Interpretazioni da Piranesi. Ricerca e Sperimentazione Gruppo Laboratorio della 

Calcografia Nazionale, 1979. Rome: Multigrafica, 1979. 

Kunsthalle (Hamburg). Piranesi. Hamburger Kunsthalle. 3.10. bis 15.11. 1970. Ed. 

Eckhard Schaar. Hamburg, 1970. 

La Roma di Piranesi. Ed. Mario Gori Sassoli. Milan: Polifilo, 1999. 

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. G. B. Piranesi (1720-1778). Cabinet des Estampes, Musée 

d’Art et d’Histoire Genève 5 Septembre-2 Novembre 1969. E. Rossier et Ed. 

Charrière. Fribourg: Le Musée, 1975. 

Museo Civico. G. B. Piranesi. Acqueforti e Disegni. Mostra Organizzata dal Museo 

Civico, Torino. Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, 1 Dicembre 1961-21 Gennaio 

1962. Catalogue. Ed. Ferdinando Salamon. Torino, 1961. 

149

Museum Boymans-van Beuningen. Rotterdam. Etsen van Piranesi, 1720-1778. 

Catalogus, Samengesteld Door B. L. D. Ihle, met Medewerking van E. J. Bouten- 

Klinkhamer. Rotterdam, 1953. 

Omaggio a Piranesi. Mostra Antologica. Benevento, 3 Aprile-15 Settembre 1968. 

Benevento: A Cura del Museo del Sannio, 1968. 

P. and D. Colnaghi and Co. Etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1720-1778. 

Catalogue of an Exhibition held at P. and D. Colnaghi and Co. … 13th 

December 1973 – 4th January 1974. London: P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., 1973. 

Phantasie und Illusion. Städte, Räume, Ruinen in Bildern des Barock. 

Ausstellungskonzeption und Katalog, Andrea Wandschneider. Paderborn: 

Bonifatius, 1995. 

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. Art of Exaggeration: Piranesi’s Perspectives on Rome. 

Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, February 22-April 15, 1995. 

Curators. Eunice D. Howe, et al. Los Angeles: The Gallery, 1995. 

---. Le Carceri. Giovanni Battista. Introduction by Mario Praz. Milan: Biblioteca 

Universale Rizzoli, 1975. 

---. Le Piccole Vedute di Roma. Introduction by Carlo Bertelli; Notes on the plates by 

Carlo Pietrangeli. Milan: Polifilo, 1985. 

---. “Letter to Sir W. Hamilton 1767.” 2 Sept. 1754-24 June 1802. Hamilton and 

Graville Papers. London: British Museum, 1931. 63-64. 

---. Map of Lombardy by M. A. de Blasco Presented to Francis I and Maria Theresa, 

Decorated in the Style of Piranesi Circa 1750 Ital. Rome, 1750. 

---. Piranesi Architetto. Roma, 15 Maggio-5 luglio 1992, American Academy in Rome. 

Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1992. 

---. Piranesi: Etchings and Drawings. Introduction by Roseline Bacou. London: 

Thames and Hudson, 1975. 

---. Piranesi: Italienske Studier. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1983. 

---. Piranesi. Rome Recorded. A Complete Edition of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s 

Vedute di Roma from the Collection of The Arthur Ross Foundation. New York: 

Arthur Ross Foundation, 1989. 

---. Piranesi. The Imaginary Views. Notes by Miranda Harvey. London: Academy 

Editions, 1979. 

---. Piranesi. Vedute di Roma. From the Arthur M. Sackler Collection, Columbia 

University, New York. New York: Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1975. 

150

---. Piranesi Nei Luoghi di Piranesi. Rome: Multigrafica, 1979. 

---. Piranesi Prints from Indiana Collections ... Exhibition. Indiana University Art 

Museum, Bloomington, January 15-March 2, 1986, Snite Museum of Art, Notre 

Dame, September 21-November 16, 1986. Bloomington: Indiana University Art 

Museum, 1986. 

---. Piranesi’s Prisons. A Perspective. 9 April-22 May, Graves Art Gallery, Surrey 

Street, Sheffield. Exhibition of Piranesi’s Famous Eighteenth Century Images 

Alongside Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Work Reflecting 

Aspects of Their Influence. With Contemporary Work by Stephen Farthing. 

Sheffield: Sheffield Arts Department, 1988. 

---. Protopiro e Didascolo Ovvero il Confronto fra le Ragioni di Scientifica con i 

Diritti di Fantastica. Raccontato da Giovanbattista ¢¡ £¥¤§¦©¨¡ nel Parere 

Sull’Architettura: Con un Sunto Antologico dei Fatti Precedenti all’Opera di 

Piranesi ed un Commento ... Scritto da Sandro Raffone. Napoli: Clean 

Edizioni, 1993. 

---. Selected Etchings ... With an Introduction by C. H. Reilly. 2 Series. Technical 

Journals: Westminster, 1914. 

---. The Prisons (Le Carceri). The Complete First and Second States. Introduction by 

Philip Hofer. New York: Dover Publications; London: Constable, 1973. 

---. Vision Piranesi. Tübingen: Wasmuth, 2002. 

---, T. Bowles, et al. A Collection of 7 Coloured Views of the Public Buildings of Rome. 

Drawn and Engraved by T. Bowles, G. W. Cavelier, G. Falda, G. P. Panini and 

Piranesi. London: Laurie and Whittle; R. Wilkinson, 1794-1800. 

Piranesi. Exhibition Catalogue. Smith College Museum of Art, 4 April-4 May 1959. 

Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 1961. 

Piranesi: Antichità romane, Vedute di Roma: Opere della Fondazione Antonio 

Mazzotta. Catalogue. Ed. Raffaella Resch. Milan: Mazzotta, 2000. 

Piranesi: Archaeologist and Vedutista: Weinreb Architectural Gallery at Henry 

Sotheran Catalogued by Priscilla Wrightson. London: B. Weinreb Architectural 

Books, 1987. 

Piranesi: Una Visió de l’Artista a Través de la Collecció de Gravats de la Reial 

Acadèmia de Belles Arts de Sant Carles. Piranesi. Una Visión del Artista a 

Través de la Colección de Grabados de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de 

151

San Carlos. Text by Adela Espinos Diaz, José Gomez Frechina, and Santiago 

Montoya Beleia. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana, 1996. 

Piranesi and Rome: A Catalogue of Selected Engravings from Le Vedute di Roma and 

Other Archaeological, Architectural and Polemical Series with an Introduction 

by Professor John Wilton-Ely, F. S. A., F. R. S. A. at Henry Sotherna. London: 

Henry Sotheran, 1998. 

Piranesi and the Eighteenth Century View in Rome. Rome: Artemide, 1998. 

Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria, gli antecedenti e il contesto: Atti del convegno, 14-17 

Novembre 1979. Ed. Anna Lo Bianco. Rome: Multigrafica, 1983. 

Piranesi e la Veduta del Settecento a Roma. Rome: Artemide Edizioni, 1989. 

Piranesi e l’Aventino. Ed. Barbara Jatta. Exhibition Catalogue. Santa Maria del 

Priorato, Rome, 16 September-8 December 1998. Milan: Electa Mondadori, 

1998. 

Piranèse et les Français. Colloque Tenu la Villa dicis, 12-14 Mai 1976. Ed. 

Georges Brunel. Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante, 1978. 

Piranesi Prints. Ithaca, N.Y.: Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art, 1964. 

Piranesi, the Dark Prisons. An Edition of the Carceri d'Invenzione from the Collection 

of The Arthur Ross Foundation: May 25-July 5, 1988, the Italian Cultural 

Institute, New York, Spring 1989, Arthur Ross Gallery/Kamin Gallery, 

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. New York: Arthur Ross Foundation, 

1988. 

Piranesi tra Venezia e l’Europa. Ed. Alessandro Bettagno. Proceedings, Fondazione 

Giorgio Cini, Venice, 13-15 October 1978. Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1983. 

Piranéz´´o: Piranesi Parafrázisok. Piranesinspired: Piranesi Paraphrases. Exhibition 

Arranged by Andrea Czére. Budapest : Szépm´´uvéseti Múzeum, 1994. 

Raccolta di 50 Vedute Antiche e Moderne della di Roma e sue Vicinanze. Incise 

da Piranesi. Rome: n.p., 1820. 

Resch, Raffaella, and Luigi Ficacci. Piranesi Vedute di Roma. Catalogo della Mostra, 

Mogliano, Veneto, 2000-2001. Rome: Mazzotta, 2000. 

Robison, Andrew. Piranesi. Early Architectural Fantasies. A Catalogue Raisonné of the 

Etchings. Washington: National Gallery of Art; Chicago and London: University 

of Chicago Press, 1986. 

Roma, Nostàlgia i Rescat: Gravats de Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Centre de Cultura 

“Sa Nostra”, Juny-Juliol, 2000. Catalogue and Text by Reynaldo González and 

152

Miguel L. Núnez Gutiérrez. Palma de Mallorca: “Sa Nostra”, Obra Social i 

Cultural, 2000. 

The Academy of Europe: Rome in the Eighteenth Century. The William Benton 

Museum of Art. University of Connecticut, 1973. 

The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Jane Martineau and Andrew 

Robison. Exhibition Catalogue. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 5 September- 

14 December 1994; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 29 January- 

23 April 1995. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. 376-405. 

The Spirit of Antiquity: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Robert Adam, and Charles-Louis 

Clérisseau: October 7 to November 25, 1984, Washington University Gallery of 

Art,St. Louis, Missouri. Curators, Joni Kinsey, et al. St. Louis, Mo.: Washington 

University, 1984. 

The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe, 1600-1750. Ed.Henry A. Millon. 

New York: Rizzoli, 1999. 

The Vatican Museums. The Vatican Collections. The Papacy and Art. New York: The 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harry N. Abrams. 

Tiepolo, Canaletto, Piranesi e Altri. Padova: Il Poligrafo, 1997. 

Urbis Romae Sciographia ex antiquis monumentis accuratisse delineata. Karolo IX. 

Galliarvm Regi Christiannissimo Stephanvs du Perac Parisiensis ... Execudebat 

Romae Franciscus Villamoena. Rome, Kal: Franciscus Villamoena, 1574. 

Veneto, Villa La Marignana-Benetton, 1989. Rome: Artemide Edizioni, 1989. 

Von Bernini bis Piranesi: Römische Architekturzeichnungen des Barock. Ed. Elisabeth 

Kieven. Stuttgart: Stuttgarter Galerieverein: Graphische Sammlung Staatsgalerie 

Stuttgart, 1993. 

Wilton-Ely, John. Piranesi. Catalogue. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978. 

---. “Giovanni Battista Piranesi.” Eds. Cara D. Denison, Myra Nan Rosenfeld, and 

Stephanie Wiles. Exploring Rome: Piranesi and His Contemporaries. Exhibition 

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Montreal, 17 August 1993-2 January 1994. New York: Pierpont Morgan 

Library, 1993. xxv-xxxi. 

---. “Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Fantasist as Designer.” Eds. Eunice D. Howe, et 

al. The Art of Exaggeration: Piranesi’s Perspectives on Rome. Exhibition 

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April 1995. Los Angeles: Fisher Gallery, 1995. 12-21. 

153

1.1.3. Works by Piranesi: Modern Anthologies 

Debenedetti, Elisa, ed. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. La Raccolta di Stampe della 

Biblioteca Fardelliana. Trapani: Corrao, 1996. 

Di Martino, Enzo, ed. Giovanni Battista Piranesi: 1720-1778. Carpi: Comune di Carpi, 

1998. 

---, ed. Piranesi e il Suo Tempo (1720-1778). Tolmezzo: Moro, 1998. 

Fouchet, Max-Pol, ed. Carceri d’Invenzione. Les Prisons Imaginaires. Paris: Le Club 

Français du Livre, 1970. 

Kroll, Renate, ed. Rom in Ansichten von Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Berlin: Staatliche 

Museen, Kupferstichkabinett u. Sammlung d. Zeichnungen, 1972. 

Lange, Paul. Ausgewählte Werke von J. B. Piranesi, Herausgegeben von Prof. Paul. 

Lange. Wien: A D. Lehmann, 1885-88. 

Lecaldano, Paolo, ed. Giovanni Battista Piranesi Nel Suo Tempo. Milan: Pan, 1978. 

Levit, Herschel, ed. Views of Rome, Then and Now. 41 Etchings by Giovanni Battista 

Piranesi. Corresponding Photographs and Text by Herschel Levit. New York: 

Dover Publications; London: Constable, 1976. 

Marini, Maurizio, ed. Le Vedute di Roma di Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Rome: Newton 

Compton, 1989. 

Morazzoni, Giuseppe, ed. Giovan Battista Piranesi, Architetto ed Incisore (1720-1778) 

Cento Tavole e Notizie Biografiche. 1900-1999. 

Nichols, Lawrence W., and Lucie Bauer, eds. Piranesi at Dartmouth. Etchings by 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the Dartmouth College Collections. Hanover: n.p., 

1976. 

Pacini, Renato, ed. G.B. Piranesi. Rome: Instituto Nazionale “L.U.C.E.”, 1932. 

Parker, Karl Theodore, Sir, ed. The Drawings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 

Reproductions, with an Introduction and Catalogue of Plates by Hylton Thomas. 

London: Faber & Faber, 1954. 

Resch, Raffaela, ed. Giambattista Piranesi: Le Antichità Romane, Carceri, Alcune 

Vedute di Archi Trionfali, Vedute di Roma. Milan: Mazzotta, 2001. 

Rhea, Blok, and Maartje de Haan, eds. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Rotterdam: 

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Maastricht: Bonnefantenmuseum, 1998. 

Stampfle, Felice, ed. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan 

154

Library. With a Foreword by Charles Ryskamp. New York: Dover Publications; 

London: Constable, 1978. 

Statens Museum for Kunst. Kongelige Kobberstiksamling. G. B. Piranesi. 3 Tegninger 

= 3 Drawings. Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling. Copenhagen: Statens 

Museum for Kunst, 1978. 

Thomas, Hylton, ed. Piranesi drawings in the Boymans Museum. 1957. 

Vatican Library. Un Manoscritto Derivato dalle’ Antichita’ del Piranesi. Vaticano 

Latino 8091. Ed. Giulio Cressedi. Rome: Fratelli Palombi Editori, 1975. 

Volkmann, Hans, ed. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Architekt und Graphiker. Mit 4 

Abbildungen im Text und 62 Abbildungen auf 52 Bildseiten. Berlin: Hessling, 

1965. 

Wilton-Ely, John, ed. Piranèse: Les Vues de Rome, Les Prisons. 1978. 

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---. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The Complete Etchings. San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 

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2. Secondary Works 

2.1. Works on Piranesi 

Aitken, James. “Piranesi and the Idea of Critical Drawing.” The Fifth Column 2:1 

(1981): 25-27. 

Allen, Stanley. “Piranesi and Duchamp: The Fictional Present.” Pratt Journal of 

Architecture 2 (1988): 55-58. 

---. “Piranesi’s Campo Marzio: An Experimental Design.” Assemblage 10 (December 

1989): 70-109. 

Andersen, Jorgen. “Giant Dreams: Piranesi’s Influence in England.” English 

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Augusta, Monferini, and Ficacci Luigi. Piranesi. Antichità Romane. Vedute di Roma. 

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Augustyn, Joanna. “Subjectivity in the Fictional Ruin: The Caprice Genre.” Romanic 

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Barrier, Janine. Piranèse. Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Image, 1995. 

Bauer, Hermann, Hans Sedlmayr. Rokoko: Struktur und Wesen Einer Europäischen 

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Biagi, Pietro. Sull’ Incisione e Sull Piranesi. Discorso Letto nella I. R. Accademia di 

Belle Arti di Venezia. Venice: Giuseppe Picotti, 1820. 

Bistolfi, Gian. Il Fanatsioso Poeta della Incisione: Giambattista Piranesi. Rome, 1914. 

Bloomer, Jennifer. Architecture and the Text: The Scripts of Joyce and Piranesi. New 

Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. 

Boatwright, Mary T. “The ‘Ara Ditus-Ustrinum of Hadrian’ in the Western Campus 

Martius and Other Problematic Roman Ustrina.” American Journal of 

Archaeology 89: 3 (July 1985): 485-97. 

Bosman, Jos. “Piranesi, Durand en Het Moderne Stabsbeeld.” Archis October 10 

(1992): 41-47. 

Brauer, Heinrich. “Gio. Batt. Piranesi verwirklicht einen Traum: Einen Zeichnung zum 

St. Basilius-Altar in Sta. Maria del Priorato.” Miscellanea Bibliothecae 

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Calatrava, Juan A. Las Carceri de Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Entre Clasicismo y 

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Calvesi, Maurizio. “Saggio introduttivo.” In Henri Focillon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 

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Bologna: Alfa, 1967. iii-xlii. 

Calzavara, Ferruccio. “Scritture disegnate: arte, architettura e didattica da Piranesi a 

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Campbell, Malcom. “Chiaroscuro and Non-finito in Piranesi’s Prisons.” Via 11 (1990): 

90-101. 

---. Piranesi. Rome Recorded. Rome: American Academy, 1990. 

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De Rycker, Johannes. “G. B. Piranesi, Pianta di Ampio Magnifico Collegio-Nowa 

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Denny, Ned. “Dungeons of the Mind: Ned Denny is surprised to discover an 18th- 

century equivalent of Nintendo-Art – Giovanni Battista Piranesi.” New 

Statesman 4 (November 2002). 

Dixon, Susan M. “Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Diverse Maniere d’adornare I cammini 

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Dodgson, Campbell. Venice; Facsimile Reproductions after the Drawings of G. Battista 

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s, Adela; mez Frechina and Santiago Montoya a. Piranesi. Una 

!del’Artista a " #s de la Coll· !de Gravats de la Reial mia de 

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Fraser, Douglas, Howard Hibbard, and Milton J. Lewine, eds. Essay in The History of 

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Gasparri, Carlo. Fontana Ritrovata: Ancora su Piranesi a Villa Albani. 1996. 

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Gavuzzo-Stewart, Silvia. Nelle Carceri di G.B. Piranesi. Leeds: Northern Universities 

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---. “Nota sulle Carceri Piranesiane.” L’Arte (1971). 

Gianni, Contessi. “Scritture Disegnate Arte Architettura e Didactica da Piranesi a 

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Giesecke, Albert. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Von Albert Giesecke; Mit Einem Titelblatt 

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Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli. Napoli: Istituto Suor Orsola Benincasa, 1990. 

Girón, Javier. “Drawing and Construction Analysis: from Piranesi to Choisy.” The 

Second International Congress on Construction History. Vol. 1. Ed. 

Malcolm Dunkeld, et al. Proceedings, Queens’ College, Cambridge University, 

29 March-2 April 2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 61-87. 

Gonzalez-Palacios, Alvar. “Piranesiana.” Il tempio del gusto: Roma e il Regno delle 

Due Sicilie: Le arti decorative in Italia fra classicismi e barocco. Milan: 

Longanesi, 1984. 113-48. 

Gosudarstvennyi Ermitazh. Dzhovanni Battista Piranezi, 1720-1778: Katalog Vystavki 

Ofortor. Ed. G. G. Grimm. 1959. 

Hannah, Robert. “The Roman Model for Another Piranesi Drawing.” Master Drawings 

32:1 (1994): 50-3. 

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