Antique Giovanni Battista Piranesi Italian Pair of Roman Antiquities Engravings

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This matched pair presents two celebrated plates by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778), issued from his influential antiquarian publication Vasi, … Read more This matched pair presents two celebrated plates by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778), issued from his influential antiquarian publication Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, Sarcofagi, Tripodi, Lucerne, Ed Ornamenti Antichi, a grand compendium of measured and theatrically lit “portraits” of ancient objects that helped define the neoclassical imagination in Britain and on the Continent. The first sheet, titled Tripodi antichi di marmo che si vedono nella Villa dell’Emo Cardinal Albani fuori di Porta Salara, depicts a group of ancient marble tripods recorded in the Villa Albani collection beyond Rome’s Porta Salaria, and is lettered with a formal dedication to Ivan Betskoy (Betsky), reflecting Piranesi’s practice of framing archaeological subjects within networks of Enlightenment-era patrons and connoisseurs. The second sheet, titled Altare antico di marmo ritrovato fra le macerie della Villa Adriana nel sito detto Pantanello, illustrates an ornate marble altar said to have been recovered among the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at the Pantanello site; the plate is explicitly dedicated to “Al Signor Tommaso Barrett Cavaliere Inglese…,” situating the image within the British collector-tourist milieu that avidly consumed Piranesi’s prints as both scholarship and souvenir. Together, the pair embodies Piranesi’s signature combination of exacting antiquarian documentation and bravura graphic drama—deep blacks, crisp line, and emphatic modeling—while the present presentation, with wide pale-blue mats and a giltwood molding with fluted frieze and corner foliate ornament, gives the prints the architectural presence they were meant to command in an interior.

Measurements: 37.75" h x 32" w x 1.5" d (each, framed) See less