Battista Giovanni Piranesi

BATTISTA GIOVANNI PIRANESI (Italy, 1720-1778).
"Roman antiquities. Large porphyry urn in which the body of Constanza is believed to have been placed".
Etching on paper, 18th century.
The paper has damp stains.
Size: 76 x 51 cm; 96 x 71,5 cm (frame).
Battista Giovanni Piranesi was a distinguished engraver. After studying architecture, he studied etching with Giuseppe Vasi in Rome. In 1743 he published his first series of prints, "Prima Parte di Architettura e Prospettiva". Produced at the age of 23, it already revealed his mastery as an engraver. Combining descriptive zeal and fantasy, his interpretations of ancient Roman monuments made an important contribution to the development of neoclassicism. In the collection "Carceri d'Invenzione" he transformed the ruins into vast dungeons full of passages and steep staircases that would greatly influence Romanticism and even Surrealism. Palatial architecture and English country houses are also indebted to Piranesi's engravings. Many plates were passed on to the present-day "Calcografia Nazionale" in Rome. In Spain, engravings by Piranesi are kept in the Biblioteca Nacional and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Valencia. In the present engraving, we see the artist reinterpreting the peculiar superimposition of the church of San Lorenzo on the foundations of the temple of Antoninus on the Via Sacra in Rome.