Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Italian, 1720 - 1778
(not assigned)Rome, ITaly, Europe
BiographyAlthough one of the supreme exponents of topographical engraving (his corpus comprises over 1,000 separate etchings), his lifelong preoccupation with architecture is central to an understanding of his wide-ranging achievements. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he spent his first 20 years in Venice training in architecture and stage design, with strong influences from the local tradition of topographical art, represented by Canaletto, and the graphic fantasies of Marco Ricci and G. B. Tiepolo. Moving in 1740 to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life, a lack of practical architectural commissions led him to develop skills in etching souvenir views for the Grand Tour market. His main creative energies, meanwhile, were concentrated on developing the architectural fantasy, or capriccio, as a vehicle for formal experiment and architectural reform, expressed in his first publication, Prima parte di architetture e prospettive (1743), as well as the celebrated suite of arcane prison compositions, Carceri d'invenzione (first state, c. 1745). By this means he was to exercise a seminal influence on European Neoclassicism through his personal contact with visiting artists, architects, and patrons in Rome over the course of nearly four decades. From 1748 onwards he began his magisterial Vedute di Roma; 135 plates, issued individually or in groups throughout the rest of his career. Pushing the boundaries of etching techniques to extremes and exploiting scenographic perspective, he combined remarkable flights of imagination with a strongly practical understanding of ancient technology. These images generated a highly charged emotional perception of the past which radically effected the art of topography and left an indelible perception of Roman Antiquity. Archaeology became of increasing concern to Piranesi during the 1750s. His treatise Le antichità romane (1756), which revolutionized the methods and range of technical illustration, swiftly won him international recognition and embroiled him, as a fervent protagonist of Rome, in the furious controversy provoked by the Greek revival. With the election of the Venetian Pope Clement XIII, the 1760s represented a golden age of patronage for Piranesi with financial support for a series of lavishly produced polemical folios (Della magnificenza ed architettura de'romani, 1761; Il Campo Marzio dell'antica Roma, 1762) and idiosyncratic designs for architecture, interiors, chimney pieces, and furniture, later illustrated in his highly influential Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini (1769). In the course of controversy his graphic style developed from a subtle Rococo linearity to the powerful tonal contrasts of the sublime, represented, somewhat ironically, by his critical contribution to the Greek revival through the powerful etchings of the Doric temples at Paestum (1778). His greatest legacy, however, was to be the inspiration provided by the powerfully revised plates of the Carceri (2nd state 1761) which have continued to provide visual metaphors for the endless processes of the creative imagination for writers, poets, and musicians as much as artists, designers, and film directors.Wilton-Ely, John. "Piranesi, Giovanni Battista." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e2060 (accessed April 11, 2012).
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