Indeed, in his Italian Journey: 1786-1788, Goethe remarked that the city’s monuments had failed to live up to the image of Rome Piranesi had supplied to him via his etchings.
As Richard Wendor puts it, “Piranesi's views of Rome had such a profound influence on the cultural imagination of the late eighteenth century, in fact, that the images themselves became yet another superimposition with which the modern eye would have to contend.” (R. Piranesi’s Vedute, which monumentalized the ruins to a previously unfathomable degree, came to rival the ruins themselves in terms of cultural understanding or Roman antiquity. The city and landscape views known as vedute had become especially popular in the 18th century as travellers on the Grand Tour sought to commemorate their travels and prove their prestige with representations of prominent cultural sites they’d visited.
#GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI ITALIAN ARCHAEOLOGIST SERIES#
Fascinated with Roman antiquity and the legacy it left to the modern city, his often fantastical etchings offer rich visual imagery and a dramatic meditation on time that has significantly shaped the cultural perception of Rome.Īmong his most famous works are a series of views of Rome, Le Vedute di Roma. This week we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (4 October 1720 - 9 November 1778), the formidable Italian artist, architect, designer, and archaeologist, famous above all for his sublime images of Rome.
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