Selected etchings by Piranesi, series 1.

Transcriber’s Note
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Transcriber included the plate numbers in their captions.
Cover image created by Transcriber, using the title page and an illustration from the original book. Result remains in the Public Domain.
Selected Etchings by PIRANESI With an Introduction by C. H. Reilly, m.a., f.r.i.b.a., Roscoe Professor of Architecture, The University of Liverpool. SERIES I. TECHNICAL JOURNALS, Ltd. CAXTON HOUSE :: WESTMINSTER
Architecturally speaking, we live at a time somewhat similar to that in which the genius of Piranesi first made its impact upon English designers. In the latter half of the eighteenth century English architects and patrons were alike growing a little tired of pure Palladianism. The novelty and spirit of Inigo Jones’s work had given place to the uninspired correctness of Campbell, Kent, and a host of lesser disciples. Restrained and elegant as the work of those architects appears to modern eyes, after the debauch of “free Classic” from which we are now emerging, it is nevertheless true that, at that time, the English Palladian formula was nearly exhausted. The circuses and crescents of Bath, with their unfluted columns and dull ornament, their endless repetitions of correct features, could not be indefinitely extended. The early Georgian houses, so comfortable in the country, began to look a little coarse and provincial in London streets, particularly to those who had taken the Grand Tour.
What more natural, then, that architects should turn again to the source and fountainhead from which Palladio had drawn his inspiration, to see whether it had anything fresh to yield?
The practising architect in England at the end of the eighteenth century required, however, a cicerone to the remains of the antique world just as much as his predecessor did in the seventeenth century. The seventeenth-century architect chose Palladio as his guide; the architect in the latter part of the eighteenth century chose Piranesi. Naturally, the lesson taught was somewhat different. The eighteenth-century architect was much further advanced in scholarship. Palladio gave the main proportions of the Orders and the principles of composition. He laid down definite rules and precepts suitable to beginners. His was the first-year work, to use a school simile. Piranesi takes the scholars of the later years and initiates them into all the mysteries of ornament and stylistic character. Offering no pedantic rules, he makes a direct appeal to the imagination of his students. He reveals to them not only the power but the intimate spirit of the Roman world. He offers them whole collections of vases and candelabra to use or not as they like. He unlocks a treasure-house—a library full of fresh detail. The detail, too, is rich, complex detail, safe only in the hands of the discerning. But Piranesi’s students in England at that time were fit to profit by such a master; among his more attentive scholars being Robert Adam, Chambers, Dance, and many other architects of the late eighteenth century, and through these he influenced the decorative designers from Chippendale to Pergolesi. Mr. Phene Spiers, not without a certain hyperbole, traces the Empire Style to Piranesi’s designs for chimneypieces. At any rate it is safe to say that the new vigour and life which came into English architecture with the work of Chambers and Adam was derived from a more thorough and complete knowledge of Roman architecture, and that the chief source of that knowledge was the vast collection of thirteen hundred or more engraved plates which Piranesi etched and published at the marvellous rate of one a fortnight throughout a fairly long life.