GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI Archaeologist, Architect and Artist 1720-1778

A Moment with Piranesi

Piranesi had a lifelong preoccupation with architecture and was born in Venice in 1720, the son of a stonemason and master builder. He was trained in Venice as a classical archaeologist and architect. As a young man, he moved to Rome in 1740 to work as a draughtsman, where he focused on his etching skills, which he is most famous for. His plates in a four-volume treatise entitled La Antichità Romane (1756) contained technical and visual information about ancient Rome's decorative vocabulary. He proceeded to revolutionize archaeological rendering methods thoroughly. He set about precisely measuring ancient Rome. His style was modern and not solely about Graeco-Roman architecture, which was academic then. He combined marvelous ideas from the Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. This was not a common approach. He influenced other important architects at the time, including British John Soane and the emergence of neoclassicism in British architecture. He received commissions from the pope and the Rezzonico family, including the Order of Malta’s church in Rome, S. Maria del Priorato.

In the heart of Italy's Campania region lies a place where time seems to stand still, where ancient ruins whisper tales of civilizations long past. This is Paestum, an archaeological treasure trove that was a muse for one of the greatest artists of the 18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

In 1777, he traveled to Poseidonia (Greek, 600BC) or Paestum (Roman), which was quite remote then, to record the three majestic Greek Doric temples. He recorded the temples with his 19-year-old son and assistant. He wanted to make souvenir models in cork—after all, this was the time of the Grand Tour, and Rome was busy with European visitors ready to purchase artistic treasures. There was a rapidly growing interest in Paestum in the 1770s, and Piranesi wanted to record the most significant classical structures (which were part of major architectural discussions in Rome). Piranesi implied that the temples' grandeur was because they were erected on Italian soil and free from the rigid rules of ancient Greek architects. This was the last set of work that Piranesi produced, as he died in 1778. This is why some drawings are emotional studies of the past rather than purely precise documentation, especially etchings with brown ink and a wash of red chalk. However, we view these as masterworks.