Piranesi Etching of a Monumental Candelabrum With Cranes From Hadrian’s Villa Circa 1770–1774

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Piranesi Etching of a Monumental Candelabrum with Cranes from Hadrian’s Villa
Circa 1770–1774

This monumental etching with engraving by Giovanni … Read more Piranesi Etching of a Monumental Candelabrum with Cranes from Hadrian’s Villa
Circa 1770–1774

This monumental etching with engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778) records one of the three colossal marble candelabra he assembled from sculptural fragments recovered at Hadrian’s Villa, near Tivoli. The plate belongs to his celebrated series Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti antichi, issued as separate plates from 1768 and gathered into two volumes in 1778, and the candelabrum it depicts survives: bought from Piranesi by Sir Roger Newdigate in 1774, it is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

The candelabrum rises in tiers from a concave-sided triangular plinth. Three lion’s legs, carved with acanthus at the knees and ending in paw feet, flank a central acanthus-sheathed support with clawed feet and carry a triangular, altar-form base, its reeded and palmette-carved moldings below panels of bearded masks and paired profile heads, with eagles spreading their wings at the angles. Above, the shaft is carved with dolphins, scallop shells, rosettes and scrolling acanthus, and ram’s heads at its upper corners support three long-necked cranes, one standing guard at each angle of the stem among acanthus and small female masks. The whole is crowned by a kneeling male figure, one arm raised behind his head, who shoulders a broad dish carved beneath with radiating flutes and acanthus.

Two blocks of engraved script flank the upper stem. They describe the piece as an ancient marble candelabrum “di gran mole” (of great size), to be seen in the Museo del Cavalier Piranesi, and praise the elegant variety and refinement of its carving. The text records that it was found in 1769, among other antiquities, at the site called Pantanello, two miles from Tivoli, then owned by the Lolli family and anciently a lake belonging to the pleasure grounds of the Villa Adriana. The lake had been drained at great expense by Gavin Hamilton, described as “Pittore Inglese,” by clearing an ancient conduit, and it yielded a great quantity of fine sculpture, some of which had adorned the lake and some of which had been thrown in at a later date to fill it. Because the inscription records the candelabrum as still in Piranesi’s museum, the plate can be dated between the Pantanello discovery of 1769 and Newdigate’s purchase in 1774.

The print is presented in a black frame with a wide white mat. At nearly three feet tall, the framed print has the vertical presence to hold a narrow wall between windows, a stair landing or the end of a library, and it sits naturally with Neoclassical furniture, plaster and marble, and other architectural prints.

Dimensions
Height (framed): 35½ inches (90.2 cm)
Width (framed): 29 inches (73.7 cm)
Depth (framed): 1¾ inches (4.4 cm)
Plate: 26 x 16 5/16 inches (66 x 41.5 cm)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

References
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, another impression of this plate, accession no. 41.71.1.13(14).
Caroline van Eck, Piranesi’s Candelabra and the Presence of the Past: Excessive Objects and the Emergence of a Style in the Age of Neoclassicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

Historical Context
From the late 1760s Piranesi turned increasingly from printmaking to the restoration and sale of antiquities, working alongside the Scottish painter and dealer Gavin Hamilton, whose draining of the Pantanello in 1769 brought up a mass of broken sculpture. From these fragments Piranesi built vases, tripods, pedestals and finally three colossal candelabra: one, intended for his own tomb in Santa Maria del Priorato, is now in the Louvre, while this one and its companion were sold to Sir Roger Newdigate for a thousand scudi and given by him to the University of Oxford.

Although the plate presents the candelabrum as an antique, recent study has shown that some three-quarters of the Oxford candelabra is new carving, and they are best understood as Piranesi’s own inventions in the Roman manner. His etchings advertised such pieces to Grand Tour clients and, used as a pattern book, carried their vocabulary of cranes, rams’ heads, masks and lion’s legs into the furniture, silver and interiors of the Neoclassical age.

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