He also produced various furnished interiors from which only two tables survive ( Minneapolis, Institute of Fine Arts Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), complex marble chimneypieces (such as the one at Burghley House, Lincolnshire), and a pioneering painted Egyptian interior for the English Coffee House in Rome (destroyed in the nineteenth century). Through the pope and members of the Rezzonico family Piranesi received commissions to carry out these ideas in reconstructing the Order of Malta's church in Rome, Santa Maria del Priorato (1764 –1765), together with designs for an unexecuted tribune for S. In response to criticism by the French critic Pierre-Jean Mariette, in 1765 Piranesi issued the manifesto Parere su l'architettura (Opinions on architecture), which advocated a highly eclectic system of design inspired by ancient Rome in contrast to the radically astringent taste supported by Greek revivalists such as Marc-Antoine Laugier, Julien-David Le Roy, and Johann Winckelmann. With the election of the Venetian Pope Clement XIII (reigned 1758 –1769), the 1760s became a golden age of patronage for Piranesi, who won financial support for a series of impressive polemical folios: Della magnificenza ed architettura de' Romani (1761 Concerning the magnificence and architecture of the Romans) Il Campo Marzio dell'antica Roma ( 1762 The Campus Martius ofĪncient Rome), and others. His four-volume treatise, Le antichit à romane (1756 The antiquities of Rome), pioneered new archaeological methods and techniques of illustration, and its publication quickly won him international recognition he became a leading protagonist for Rome in the furious controversy provoked by the excessive claims of Hellenic originality by promoters of the Greek revival. His personal contact with visiting designers such as William Chambers, Robert Mylne, George Dance, John Soane, and, above all, Robert and James Adam, enabled him to exert a critical influence on the development of avant-garde British architecture.ĭuring the 1750s archaeology became increasingly important to Piranesi. By these means Piranesi was to exercise a seminal influence on visiting artists, architects, and patrons in Rome over the course of nearly four decades. Such was the intention behind his first publication, Prima parte di architetture e prospettive (1743 Part one of architecture and perspectives) as well as a group of arcane prison compositions, Carceri d'invenzione (c. Piranesi's main creative energies were concentrated on developing the architectural fantasy, or capriccio, as a device for formal experiment, creative release, and a stimulus for contemporary architects, whose designs he thought had failed to measure up to the ruined grandeur around them. These theatrical images were to generate a highly charged emotional perception of the Eternal City and its environs that has lasted to the present day. Around 1748 he began to issue his magisterial views of Rome, Vedute di Roma (135 plates), which he published individually, or in groups, throughout the rest of his career. As a graphic artist of genius he was to transform the mundane topographical view into a highly sophisticated means of architectural communication -based on a strongly practical understanding of ancient technology -as well as a vehicle of powerful emotional expression. Moving in 1740 to Rome, where he spent the larger part of his life, a lack of practical commissions led him to develop skills in etching souvenir views, or vedute, for the grand tour market. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he spent his first twenty years in Venice training in architecture and stage design, and was strongly influenced by the local tradition of topographical art represented by Canaletto and the etched fantasies of Marco Ricci (1676 –1729) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696 –1770). By means of over a thousand etched plates and his theoretical defense of creative fantasy, Piranesi revolutionized the European perception of Roman antiquity and exerted a major influence on many of the leading architects and designers of European neoclassicism. PIRANESI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1720 –1778), Venetian architect, engraver, and archaeologist.
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