Prints and their makers: essays on engravers and etchers old and modern

by Unknown

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI

(1720-1778)

Part I

By BENJAMIN BURGES MOORE

THE life of Piranesi was eminently that of a man of genius, characterized by all the peculiarities ascribable to genius, perhaps as failures of human nature, but also distinguished by that which imparts to its possessor an imperishable renown. Those peculiarities are worthy of notice, as they bear so much on the character of his work; but his works, wonderful as they are in point of execution, are less to be admired for this than for the interest of the subjects he chose, and that which he imparted to them. In an age of frivolities, he boldly and single-handed dared to strike out for himself a new road to fame; and in dedicating his talents to the recording and illustrating from ancient writers the mouldering records of former times, he met with a success as great as it was deserved, combining, as he did, all that was beautiful in art with all that was interesting in the remains of antiquity.”

These words were prefixed to an account of Piranesi’s career published in London during the year 1831 in “The Library of the Fine Arts,” and based upon a sketch of his life written by his son, Francesco, but never published, although the manuscript at that period had passed into the hands of the publishers, Priestly and Weale, only to be subsequently lost or destroyed.

Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi

From the engraving by F. Polanzani, dated 1750

It is impossible to study this little known portrait without being convinced of its accurate likeness. It certainly conveys an impression of the man’s dæmonic force, which is not given by the more frequently reproduced statue executed by Angelini.

Size of the original etching, 15¼ × 11¼ inches

Piranesi. Arch of Septimius Severus

A rendering almost as faithful as an architect’s drawing, which Piranesi’s unfailing genius has transformed into an enchanting work of art. This arch stands in the Roman Forum. It was dedicated 203 A.D. in commemoration of victories over the Parthians.

Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27¾ inches

Eighty years, therefore, have passed since this evaluation of the great Italian etcher was written, yet to-day he is no more appreciated at his full worth than he was then. At all times it has been not uncommon for an artist to attain a kind of wide and enduring renown, although estimated at his true value and for his real excellences by only a few; but of such a fate it would be difficult to select a more striking or illustrious example than Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Living and dying in the Eternal City, Rome, to whose august monuments his fame is inseparably linked, he was the author of the prodigious number of over thirteen hundred large plates, combining the arts of etching and engraving, which, aside from their intrinsic merit as works of art, are of incalculable value on account of the inexhaustible supply of classic motives which they offer to all designers, and to which they, more than any other influence, have given currency.

These prints, in early and beautiful proofs, are still to be bought at relatively low figures, while each year sees the sale, by thousands, of impressions from the steeled plates still existing at Rome in the Royal Calcography;—impressions which, although in themselves still sufficiently remarkable to be worth possessing, are yet so debased as to constitute a libel upon the real powers of Piranesi.

The wide diffusion of these ignoble prints, and the fact that Piranesi’s output was so great as to place his work within the reach of the slenderest purse, are largely responsible for the failure of the general public to apprehend his real greatness; for rarity calls attention to merit, to which in fact it often gives a value entirely fictitious, while there is always difficulty in realizing that things seen frequently and in quantities may have qualities far outweighing those of work which has aroused interest by its scarcity. This is why the fame of Piranesi is widely spread, although his best and most characteristic work is almost unknown, and his real genius generally unrecognized.

Born in Venice, October 4th, 1720, and named after Saint John the Baptist, Piranesi was the son of a mason, blind in one eye, and of Laura Lucchesi. His maternal uncle was an architect and engineer,—for in those days the same person frequently combined the two professions,—who had executed various water-works and at least one church. From his uncle the young Giovanni Battista received his earliest instruction in things artistic, for which he appears to have displayed a conspicuously precocious aptitude. Before he was seventeen he had attracted sufficient attention to assure him success in his father’s profession, but Rome had already fired his imagination, and aroused that impetuous determination which marked his entire career. His yearning after Rome report says to have been first aroused by a young Roman girl whom he loved, but, however that may be, he overcame the determined opposition of his parents, and, in 1738, at the age of eighteen, set out for the papal city to study architecture, engraving, and in general the fine arts; for even in those degenerate days there were left some traces of that multiform talent which distinguished the artists of the Renaissance. When he reached the goal of his longing, the impression produced by the immortal city on so fervid an imagination must have been so deep, so overwhelming, as to annihilate all material considerations, although they could not have been other than harassing, since the allowance received from his father was only six Spanish piastres a month, or some six or seven lire of the Italian money of to-day. By what expedients he managed to live we cannot even conjecture, but it may be supposed that he was boarded, apprentice-wise, by the masters under whom he studied. These teachers were Scalfarotto and Valeriani, a noted master of perspective and a pupil of one Ricci of Belluno, who had acquired from the great French painter and lover of Rome, Claude Lorrain, the habit of painting highly imaginative pictures composed of elements drawn from the ruins of the Roman Campagna. This style was transmitted to Piranesi by Valeriani, without doubt stimulating that passionate appreciation of the melancholy grandeur of ruined Rome already growing in his mind, and afterward to fill his entire life and work.

Piranesi. Arch of Vespasian

In this, as in many of Piranesi’s compositions, the figures are frankly posing, but their
presence adds such charm to the scene that none could wish them absent.

Size of the original etching, 19 × 27⅜ inches

Piranesi. Arch of Trajan at Benevento, in the Kingdom of Naples

A fine rendering of that air of glory which the most dilapidated fragments of a Roman Arch of Triumph never lose. The Arch of Trajan, one of the finest of ancient arches, was dedicated A.D. 114. It is of white marble, 48 feet high and 30½ wide, with a single arch measuring 27 by 16½ feet. The arch is profusely sculptured with reliefs illustrating Trajan’s life and his Dacian triumphs.

Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27½ inches

At the same time, he acquired a thorough knowledge of etching and engraving under the Sicilian, Giuseppe Vasi, whose etchings first aroused the great Goethe’s longing for Italy. At the age of twenty, thinking, probably not without foundation, that this master was concealing from him the secret of the correct use of acid in etching, Piranesi is reported, in his anger, to have made an attempt to murder Vasi. Such an act would not be out of keeping with the character of the fiery Venetian, for, before leaving Venice, he had already been described by a fellow-pupil as “stravagante,” extravagant, or fantastic, a term not restricted by Italians to a man’s handling of money, but applied rather to character as a whole, in which connection it usually denotes the less fortunate side of that complete and magnificent surrender to an overwhelming passion which aroused so lively an admiration of the Italian nature in the great French writer, Stendhal. When we, tame moderns, judge the “extravagance” of such characters, it is only fair to recollect that, with all their faults and crimes, these same unbridled Italians were capable of heroic virtues, unknown to our pale and timid age. Men like Cellini and Piranesi, who had much in common, are simply incarnate emotional force, a fact which is, at the same time, the cause of their follies and the indispensable condition of their genius.

After this quarrel Piranesi returned to Venice, where he attempted to gain a livelihood by the practice of architecture. There is reason to believe that at this period he studied under Tiepolo; at any rate there exist in his published works a few curious, rather rococo plates entirely different from his usual manner, and very markedly influenced by the style of Tiepolo’s etching. He also studied painting with the Polanzani who is responsible for that portrait of him which forms the frontispiece to the first edition of “Le Antichità Romane,” and gives so vivid an impression of the dæmonic nature of the man. Meeting with little success in Venice, he went to Naples, after returning to Rome, attracted principally by archæological interests. He stayed at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Pæstum, where at this time, undoubtedly, he made the drawings of the temples afterward etched and published by his son. The drawings for these etchings of Pæstum, among the best known of the Piranesi plates, are now in the Soane Museum in London.

Piranesi. The Basilica, Pæstum

Size of the original etching, 17¾ × 26⅝ inches

Piranesi. The Temple of Neptune at Pæstum

Size of the original etching, 19½ × 26⅜ inches

Having decided that he had no vocation for painting, which he definitely abandoned at this time, Piranesi returned to Rome, and settled there permanently. His father now wished him to return to Venice, but he was altogether unwilling to do so, and replied, characteristically, that Rome being the seat of all his affections it would be impossible for him to live separated from her monuments. He intimated that in preference to leaving, he would give up his allowance, a suggestion upon which his father acted promptly by stopping all remittances, so that, estranged from his relatives, Piranesi was now entirely dependent upon his own resources for a livelihood.

His poverty and suffering at this period were undoubtedly great, but his indomitable nature could be crippled by no material hardships. He devoted himself entirely to etching and engraving, and, when twenty-one, published his first composition. At this time he was living in the Corso opposite the Doria-Pamphili Palace, but even if the neighborhood was illustrious, it is not pleasant to think what wretched garret must have hidden the misery of his struggling genius. His first important and dated work, the “Antichità Romane de’ Tempi della Republica, etc.,” was published in 1748, with a dedication to the noted antiquary, Monsignore Bottari, chaplain to Pope Benedict XIV. This work was received with great favor, as the first successful attempt to engrave architecture with taste, and from the day of its appearance Piranesi may be said to have been famous. However, he still experienced the utmost difficulty in finding the money necessary to subsist and to procure the materials requisite to his work. Yet, despite his terrible poverty, his labor was unceasing and tireless to a degree that we can now scarcely conceive. It must be borne in mind that, in addition to etching and engraving, he was engaged in the extensive study of archæology, which led him to undertake many remarkable researches. He became a noted archæologist of great erudition, as is shown by numerous controversies with famous antiquarians of the day. Some idea of the copiousness of his knowledge can be gained from the fact that his argument covers a hundred folio pages in that controversy in which he upheld the originality of Roman art against those who claimed it to be a mere offshoot of Grecian genius. In the preface to one of his books, he refers to it as the result of “what I have been able to gather from the course of many years of indefatigable and most exact observations, excavations, and researches, things which have never been undertaken in the past.” This statement is quite true, and when we realize that the preparation of a single plate, such as the plan of the Campus Martius, would, in itself, have taken most men many years of work, we can only feel uncomprehending amazement at the capacity for work possessed by this man of genius.

Piranesi. The Temple of Concord

From this plate it is possible to gain an idea of the greater beauty possessed by ruined Rome when
still shrouded in vegetation. The Arch of Septimius Severus is seen in the middle distance

Size of the original etching, 18⅛ × 27⅛ inches

Piranesi. Site of the Ancient Roman Forum

A very interesting historical document which makes it possible to realize an aspect of the Forum
at present difficult to conceive

Size of the original, 14⅞ × 23¼ inches

The very spirit of imperial Rome would seem to have filled Piranesi, making him its own, so that the vanished splendor was to him ever present and added to the strange melancholy of the vine-grown ruins which alone remained from the “grandeur that was Rome.” In every age and in every province most Italians have been animated by a lively sense of their direct descent from classic Rome,—a feeling that its fame was peculiarly their inheritance in a way true of no other people, so that this glorious descent was their greatest pride and claim to leadership. In the darkest days of oppression and servitude, when Italy sat neglected and disconsolate among her chains, there were never lacking nobler souls who kept alive a sense of what was fitting in the descendants of classic Rome, and took therein a melancholy pride. But no Italian was ever more completely an ancient Roman than Piranesi, who certainly, in despite of his Venetian birth, considered himself a “Roman citizen.” This sentiment played an important part in, perhaps, the most characteristic act of his whole life, namely, his fantastic marriage, of which he himself left an account not unworthy of Cellini.

He was drawing in the Forum one Sunday, when his attention was attracted by a boy and girl, who proved to be the children of the gardener to Prince Corsini. The girl’s type of features instantly convinced Piranesi that she was a direct descendant of the ancient Romans, and so aroused his emotions that on the spot he asked if it were possible for her to marry him. Her exact reply is not recorded, although it must have conveyed the fact that she was free, but it can surprise no one to hear that the girl was thoroughly frightened by such sudden and overpowering determination. His hasty resolution was confirmed when Piranesi afterward learned that she had a dower of one hundred and fifty piastres, or some three hundred lire of to-day, a fact certain to arouse a keen realization both of his poverty and of the value of money in those days. Without any delay, he proceeded to ask the girl’s hand in marriage of her parents, who, like the girl, appear to have been so terrified and overwhelmed by the cyclonic nature of the man as to be incapable of the slightest resistance. Whatever may have been the motives of all the parties concerned, the fact is that Piranesi was married to the descendant of the ancient Romans exactly five days after he first laid eyes on her classic features! Immediately after the wedding, having placed side by side his wife’s dowry and his own finished plates, together with his unfinished designs, he informed his presumably astonished bride that their entire fortune was now before them, but that in three years’ time her portion should be doubled; which proved to be no boast but a promise that he actually fulfilled.

According to report, he told his friends that he was marrying in order to obtain the money required for the completion of his great book on Roman Antiquities. However, even if he did marry for money, he maintained all his life, to the poor woman’s great discomfort, as jealous a watch over his wife as could be expected of the most amorous of husbands; so his affections as well as his vanity may, perhaps, have been called into play by his marriage. At any rate, his ideas as to family life were worthy of the most severe Roman paterfamilias. His son, Francesco, born in 1756, relates that, when absorbed in his studies, he would quite forget the hours for meals, while his five children, neither daring to interrupt him nor eat without him, experienced all the miseries of hunger. His domestic coercion and discipline were doubtless extreme, but the family would seem to have lived not too unhappily.

Piranesi. View of the “Campo Vaccino”

The Site of the Ancient Roman Forum showing the Arch of Septimius Severus, Columns of the Temple of Jupiter Tonans and of the Temple of Concord and, in the distance, the Arch of Titus, the Colosseum, etc., etc.

Size of the original etching, 16⅛ × 21½ inches

Piranesi. The Arch of Titus

In this plate can be seen a favorite device of Piranesi’s, which is to enhance the size and stability of massive architecture by placing on some part of the ruin a human figure in active motion. The Arch of Titus was built in commemoration of the taking of Jerusalem. The vault is richly coffered and sculptured, and the interior faces of the piers display reliefs of Titus in triumph, with the plunder of the temple at Jerusalem.

Size of the original etching, 18⅝ × 27¾ inches

Every two years, if not oftener, a monumental book would make its appearance, to say nothing of separate plates, and Piranesi was now a famous man. With the exception of Winckelmann, he did more than any one to spread a knowledge and love of classic art, while his learning and his researches aroused a widespread appreciation of the nobility of Roman ruins, thereby largely contributing to their excavation and protection. His exhaustive acquaintance with antiquity and his impassioned admiration for its beauty, combined with his singular and interesting character, caused him to mingle with all that was most remarkable in the world of arts and letters in Rome, at the same time bringing him into relation with whatever foreigners of distinction might visit the city. He was, however, then and always a poor man, for his first important work, “Le Antichità Romane,” sold in the complete set for the ridiculous pittance of sixteen paoli, or about seventeen lire, while later the Pope was wont to pay him only a thousand lire for eighteen gigantic volumes of etchings. The very fact that his fertility was so enormous, lowered the price it was possible to ask for his plates during his lifetime, just as since his death it has militated against a correct valuation of his talent. Forty years after he came to Rome, he wrote to a correspondent that he had made, on an average, some seven thousand lire of modern money a year, out of which he had had to support his family, pay for the materials required in his business, and gather together that collection of antiquities which was a part of his stock in trade.

The rapidity with which Piranesi worked, and the number of plates, all of unusually large dimensions, which he executed, are so extraordinary as to leave one bewildered by the thought of such incomprehensible industry. Competent authorities vary in their statements as to the number of plates produced by Piranesi, but accepting as correct the lowest figure, which is thirteen hundred, it will be found that for thirty-nine years he produced, on a rough average, one plate every two weeks. Ordinarily, great productiveness will be found to have damaged the quality of the work accomplished, but this is not true in the case of Piranesi. Although his work is of varying merit, like that of all true artists, and even comprises examples lacking his usual excellence, there is no plate which betrays any signs of hurry or careless workmanship, while in many the meticulous finish is remarkable. Such an output is in itself phenomenal, yet in preparation for these works he found the time to pursue archæological researches and studies, in themselves sufficiently exhaustive to have occupied the life of an ordinary man. Moreover, in his capacity of architect, he executed various important restorations, including those of the Priorato di Malta, where he is buried, and of Santa Maria del Popolo. Most of his restorations were undertaken by command of the Venetian, Pope Clement XIII, who bestowed on him the title of Knight, or Cavaliere, a distinction of which he was proud, as he was of his membership in the “Royal Society of Antiquaries” in London, of which he was made an honorary fellow in 1757.

Piranesi. The Arch of Titus

Showing the relief of the Triumph of Titus and the carrying away of the Seven-branched Candle-stick from Jerusalem. A particularly beautiful and not very well-known plate, which clearly shows Piranesi’s fine sense of composition, and his keen appreciation of that singularly picturesque contrast between the ancient ruins and the more modern buildings in which they were then embedded.

Size of the original etching, 15⅞ × 24¼ inches

Piranesi. Façade of St. John Lateran

Piranesi, almost without exception, placed a written description of the scene on every one of his plates, using it as a decorative feature. In this case it proves an integral part of a group which makes an interesting etching out of what otherwise would have been a simple architectural drawing.

Size of the original etching, 18⅞ × 27½ inches

The question of how much assistance Piranesi received in the execution of his plates is an interesting one. In a few prints, the figures were etched by one Jean Barbault, whose name sometimes appears on the margins with that of Piranesi. The latter’s son, Francesco, was taught design and architecture by his father, whose manner he reproduced exactly, although none of the numerous etchings which he left behind him show any signs of those qualities which constitute the greatness of his parent’s work. The daughter, Laura, also etched in the manner of her father and has left some views of Roman monuments. These two children, together with one of his pupils, Piroli, undoubtedly aided him, but their moderate skill is a proof that their assistance could not have been carried very far. That his pupils never formed a sort of factory for the production of work passing under their master’s name, as happened with some famous painters, is made certain by the fact that he established no school which caught his manner and produced work reminiscent or imitative of his. His unparalleled output must, therefore, be almost entirely a result of his own unaided labor.

Piranesi died at Rome, surrounded by his family, on the ninth of November, 1778, of a slight disorder rendered serious by neglect. His body was first buried in the church of St. Andrea della Fratte, but was soon afterward removed to that Priory of Santa Maria Aventina which he had himself restored. Here his family erected a statue of him, carved by one Angelini after the design of Piranesi’s pupil, Piroli. Baron Stolberg writes in his “Travels”: “Here is a fine statue of the architect Piranesi, as large as life, placed there by his son. It is the work of a living sculptor, Angelini, and though it certainly cannot be compared with the best antiquities, it still possesses real merit.”

The singular figure of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, with his power, his fire, and his passionate love of Roman grandeur, not unworthy of some great period of rebirth, appears all the more phenomenal when viewed in relation to his times and his surroundings. The corruption of the pontifical city had been flagrant since the days when it filled with scorn and loathing the wonderful “Regrets” penned by the exiled French poet, Joachim du Bellay, whose homesick heart took less pleasure in the hard marble and audacious fronts of Roman palaces than in the delicate slate of the distant dwelling built by his Angevin ancestors,—but its depravity had at least been replete with virility and splendor. After the Council of Trent, however, the Counter-Reformation spread over the Roman prelacy a wave of external reform, which left the inner rottenness untouched, but veiled it decently with all the stifling and petty vices of hypocrisy, until Roman life gradually grew to be that curious androgynous existence which we see reflected so clearly in Casanova’s memoirs. During the eighteenth century, when Piranesi lived, the whole of Italy had sunk to depths of degradation such as few great races have ever known, not because the people were hopelessly decayed, for their great spirit never died, but lived to flame forth in 1848 and create that marvelous present-day regeneration of Italy, which is perhaps the most astonishing example of the rebirth of a once great but apparently dead nation that the world has yet seen. The debased condition of Italy at that time was caused, rather, by centuries of priestly and foreign oppression, which had stifled the entire country until it had fallen into a state of torpor little different to death. Any sign of intellectual or political activity, however slight or innocent, had long been ruthlessly repressed by Austria and the petty tyrants who ruled the states of Italy. Since men must find some occupation to fill their lives, or else go mad, in a land where every noble and even normal employment was forbidden, the Italian of the day was forced to confine himself within the limits of an idle inanity, concerned only with petty questions and petty interests. It is difficult for people of to-day to conceive the abject futility to which such oppression and enforced inactivity can reduce an entire nation. In France the comparative freedom enjoyed under the old régime gave to the eighteenth century, in its most frivolous and futile moments, a charming grace utterly denied to enslaved and priest-ridden Italy. To realize the situation, it is only necessary to consider for a moment the institution of the cicisbeo, and to read Parini’s “Il Giorno.” In this world of little loveless lovers, of sonneteers and collector academicians, the figure of Piranesi looms gigantic, like a creature of another world. He had a purity of taste in artistic matters quite unknown to his contemporaries, while his originality, his passion, and his vigor seem indeed those of some antique Roman suddenly come to life to serve as pattern for a people fallen on dire days.

Piranesi. View of the Ruins of the Golden House of Nero
Commonly Called the Temple of Peace

A striking image of the romantic desolation in Roman ruins long since removed
by modern research

Size of the original etching, 19¼ × 28 inches

Piranesi. Interior of the Pantheon, Rome

A good illustration of Piranesi’s originality in choosing a point of view
so curious as to give a novel air to the best known subjects

The Pantheon, completed by Agrippa B.C. 27, consecrated to the divine ancestors of the Julian family, and now dedicated as the Church of Santa Maria Rotonda, is 142½ feet in diameter and its height, to the apex of the great hemispherical coffered dome, is the same. The lighting of the interior is solely from an opening, 28 feet in diameter, at the summit of the dome. The dome is practically solid concrete.

Size of the original etching, 18⅞ × 22¼ inches

Francesco Piranesi, after the death of his father, sold the collection formed by him to Gustavus III of Sweden in return for an annuity. He continued the publication of etchings, many, although unacknowledged, from drawings by his father, and was assisted in his archæological research by Pope Pius VI. After various rather dishonorable transactions, as spy to the court of Sweden, he started for Paris by sea in 1798, having with him the plates of his father’s etchings, and accompanied in all probability by his sister Laura. The ship on which he traveled was captured and all it contained taken as a prize by a British man-of-war, England and France being then engaged in hostilities. By some curious chance, the English admiral knew the worth of Piranesi’s work, and persuaded the officers who had made the capture to restore the plates to his son, and in addition obtained, by some still more curious chance, both the admission of the plates into French territory free of duty, and government protection of Francesco’s ownership. At Paris, Francesco Piranesi and his brother, Pietro, tried to found both an academy and a manufactory of terra-cotta. He also republished his father’s etchings and his own, thus creating the first French edition, already inferior in quality to the original Roman impressions. He died in Paris, in 1810, in straitened circumstances. The plates of both the father’s and the son’s work passed into the hands of the publishers Firmin-Didot, who republished them once more. The original plates, which at one time were rented for almost nothing to any one who wished them for a day’s printing, finally found a refuge, as before said, in the Royal Calcography at Rome, where they have been coated with steel and rebitten, so that it is now possible to print as many copies every year as tourists and architects may desire. It can, therefore, be seen that, most unfortunately, the world is flooded with countless impressions which, even if they have value for an architect as documents, or still retain enough character to give them some merit as pictures, are yet so utterly changed and debased as to do the gravest and most irreparable injustice to the reputation of the genius who created them.

Piranesi. Piazza Navona, Rome

This plate shows how Piranesi could render a complicated view without confusion and, at
the same time, give an air of novelty to a well-known place

Size of the original etching, 18⅜ × 27⅝ inches

Piranesi. Interior of the Villa of Mæcenas, at Tivoli

An example of Piranesi’s skill in making a rather ordinary scene appear dramatic, and arousing
a sense of vastness greater than that imparted by the actual building

Size of the original etching, 16⅝ × 23⅝ inches

Part II

“LE CARCERI D’INVENZIONE” (THE PRISONS)

Any one who bestows even a passing inspection on the etchings of Piranesi will be struck by the intensity of imagination which they display, a quality whose precise nature it will perhaps be useful to analyze, since, despite the fact that we use the word constantly, the thousand differing values which we attach to it render our ideas of its true meaning in general of the vaguest. Reduced to its ultimate essence, imagination would appear to be the faculty of picture-making; that is to say, the power of bringing images before the mental eye with absolute exactitude, and of clothing ideas with a definite form, so that they have a reality quite as great as that which characterizes the objects of the external world. So long as ideas remain in the mind in the form of abstract conceptions, they are food for reason, but have no power to move us. It is only when, by means of the imaginative faculty, the concept has presented itself as a definite image, that it arouses our emotions and becomes a motive of conduct. When, for example, the idea of an injury to some one we love comes into our sphere of consciousness, a concrete picture of that injury presents itself in some form or other to our inner vision, and is the cause of the emotion which we experience. Our sympathy and understanding will be proportionate to the varying distinctness with which our imaginative power offers such images for our contemplation. Imagination therefore connotes the ability to conceive the emotions and experiences of others, and is thus indissolubly connected with sympathy and all the nobler qualities of human nature.

Piranesi. The Temple of Apollo, near Tivoli

Size of the original etching, 18¾ × 24⅝ inches

Piranesi. The Falls at Tivoli

This etching illustrates a little known side of Piranesi’s talent, namely, his ability
to etch pure landscape

The Falls of the Teverone (the ancient Anio) at Tivoli are fifteen miles east-northeast of Rome. Tivoli was the favorite place of residence of many Romans—Mæcenas, Augustus, Hadrian—and the ruins of both Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa of Mæcenas are still to be seen.

Size of the original etching, 18⅞ × 28⅛ inches

The fact that our conduct is determined not by concepts, but by mental images which motive emotion, although at first it appear paradoxical, will certainly be recognized by any one who is willing to study, if only for a short time, his own mental experiences. This truth was realized with such force as to be made the base of their entire spiritual discipline by that notable Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, and his followers, the Jesuit fathers, who have understood the complex and subtle mechanism of the human soul more profoundly and exhaustively than any other body of men which has ever existed. In classic times Horace was cognizant of this peculiarity of man’s mind when he wrote that the emotions are aroused more slowly by objects which are presented to consciousness by hearing than by those made known by sight. Burke, it is true, disputes this dictum of the Latin poet, on the ground that, among the arts, poetry certainly arouses emotions more intense than those derived from painting. Although this is probably true, for reasons which he details and which it would be wearisome to reiterate here, it is certain that poetry moves us exactly in ratio to the power it possesses of creating vivid images for our contemplation, while it is certainly doubtful whether any emotion excited through hearing surpasses in vivacity that experienced on suddenly seeing certain objects or situations.

All artists at all worthy of the name are, therefore, possessed to a certain degree of imagination. It is the gift which makes visible to them whatever they embody in words, pictures, sounds, or sculpture. If totally deprived of it, they could create nothing, for no man can express what does not appear to him as having a real existence for at least the moment of creation. In the domain of art, imagination, in its lower forms, is merely the power of recollecting and reproducing things endowed with material existence; but in its highest development, when handling the conceptions and emotions of an original mind, it acquires the power of actual creation, and is inseparably attached to the loftiest acts of which man is capable.

Piranesi. The Falls at Tivoli

Among later works there are few better expressions of that feeling for nature in its wildest aspects, which, practically unknown until the time of Rousseau, is now considered the speciality of modern artists. That Piranesi appreciated this side of nature, and was able to express its poetry and power, could be proved by this plate alone.

Size of the original etching, 18¾ × 28⅛ inches

Piranesi. St. Peter’s and the Vatican

This is perhaps the best example of Piranesi’s exaggerated perspective. It is quite justified, in this case at least, by the success with which it creates an impression of vastness and of grandeur which was certainly aimed at by the architects of St. Peter’s, but which the exterior of the actual building, quite as certainly, fails to arouse.

Size of the original etching, 18 × 27¾ inches

Every plate etched by Piranesi betrays to even a careless glance the presence of imagination in some form, while in one series this noble faculty is revealed with an amplitude almost unparalleled. If it be only the presentment of fragments of Roman epitaphs, he finds a way by some play of light or shade, or by some trick of picturesque arrangement, to throw a certain interest about them, relieving the dryness of barren facts; if it be the etching of some sepulchral vault, in itself devoid of any but antiquarian interest, he introduces some human figure or some suggestive implement to give a flash of imagination to the scene. In those very plates where he depicts the actually existing monuments of classic Rome, and in which it was his expressed intention to save these august ruins from further injury and preserve them forever in his engravings, he created what he saw anew, and voiced his own distinctive sentiment of the melancholy grandeur of ruined Rome. To-day the word impressionism has come to have a rather restricted meaning in connection with a recent school of art, but Piranesi’s work, like that of all really great artists, is in the true sense of the word impressionistic. In passing, it may be remarked that he was one of the rare artists in earlier times who worked directly from nature, a habit distinctive of our modern impressionism. Piranesi is concerned with the expression of his own peculiar impression of what he sees; for the benefit of others and for his own delight he gives form to his own particular vision of whatever he treats. He certainly was desirous of, and successful in, recording the existing forms of the buildings he loved so well; it is also true that his etchings and engravings are in many ways faithful renderings which have immense historical and antiquarian value, since they preserve an aspect of Rome none shall ever see again, but together with the actual facts, and transcending them, he offers the imaginative presentment of his own creative emotion. What he draws is based on nature, and is full of verisimilitude, but it is not realistic in the base way that a photograph would be. It contains while it surpasses reality, and is faithful to the idea of what he sees, using that word in its Platonic sense.

Taine, in what is probably the most lucid and exhaustive definition of the nature of a work of art ever given, starts from the statement that all great art is based on an exact imitation of nature; then proceeds to demonstrate how this imitation of nature must not extend to every detail, but should, instead, confine itself to the relations and mutual dependencies of the parts; and finally states, as the condition essential to creating a work of art, that the artist shall succeed, by intentional and systematic variation of these relations, in setting free, in expressing more clearly and completely than in the real object, some essential characteristic or predominating idea. This is wherein art transcends nature, and a work of art is, therefore, constituted by the fact that it expresses the essential idea of some series of subjects, freed from the accidents of individuality, in a form more harmoniously entire than that attained by any object in nature. Now this is precisely what Piranesi did. He is often taken to task for his departure from a literal statement of fact in his renderings of architectural subjects, but, in so departing, he is varying the interrelation of parts so as to disengage the characteristic essence of what he depicts, and thus create a work of art, not a historical document. If he lengthens Bernini’s colonnade in front of St. Peter’s, he is only composing with the same liberty accorded to Turner, when, in one picture of St. Germain, he introduces elements gathered from three separate parts of the river Seine; and by so doing he expresses the idea of limitless grandeur, latent in St. Peter’s, with a fullness it does not possess in the actual building. In his “Antiquities of Rome,” he disengages a sense of devastation and of desolate majesty which is the fundamental characteristic of Roman ruin, and one that could have presented itself with such directness and force only to the mind of an artist of genius. His own vision of the inner truth of what he saw, stripped of everything accidental, is what he gives to posterity, and what lifts his work out of the field of simple archæology into the proud realm of true art.

Piranesi. The Villa d’Este at Tivoli

It is interesting to note that at the time Piranesi etched this fine plate the avenue of Cypress trees, which now adds so much to the picturesqueness of the Villa d’Este, was not even planted.

Size of the original etching, 18½ × 27⅝ inches

Piranesi. Title-page of “The Prisons”

From “Opere Varie di Architettura Prospettive Grotteschi Antichita sul Gusto Degli Antichi Romani Inventate, ed Incise da Gio. Batista Piranesi. Architetto Veneziano.” (Rome, 1750.)

Size of the original etching, 21¼ × 16¼ inches

Even in those plates where he etches actual scenes with loving care, Piranesi passes nature, as it were, through the alembic of his own personality, doing this moreover in a way peculiar to him and to him alone. His originality consists in this,—that his mind, when considering an object, seized instinctively on certain distinguishing features peculiar to that object, qualities which his mind, and only his, was capable of extracting from the rough ore of ordinary perception; and that for the powerful impression which he thus experienced, he was able to find an adequate and distinctive expression. It was his good fortune to behold Rome in a moment of pathetic and singular beauty, irrevocably vanished, as one of the penalties to be paid for the knowledge gained by modern excavation. In those days the Roman ruins did not have that trim air, as of skeletons ranged in a museum, which they have taken on under our tireless cleansing and research. For centuries the barbarians of Rome had observed the precept: “Go ye upon her walls and destroy; but make not a full end,” so that only the uppermost fragments of temple columns protruded through the earth where the cattle browsed straggling shrubbery above the buried Forum, while goats and swine herded among cabins in the filth and century-high dirt which covered the streets that had been trod by the pride of emperors. But that which, more than anything else, helped to create an atmosphere of romantic beauty none shall see again, was the indescribable tangle of vine, shrub, and flower, which in those days draped and hid under a mass of verdure the mighty ruins of baths and halls that still stupefy by their vastness when we see them now, devoid of their ancient marble dressing, stripped clean like polished bones. Shelley tells how even in his day the Baths of Caracalla were covered with “flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever-winding labyrinths.”

The sentiment of august grandeur inspired by the indestructible mass of Roman ruins was, therefore, in those days curiously complicated by the contrast between them and the fantastic growth of ever-passing, ever-renewed vegetation which wrapped them as in a mantle. The poignancy of this beauty Piranesi seized with a felicity and expressed with a plenitude given to no one but to him. He was, both by nature and by volition, profoundly classical, yet he enveloped all that he handled, however classic it might be in subject, with a sense of mysterious strangeness so strong as to arouse the sensation called in later times romantic. This contrast is one of the distinctive phases of his originality.

It would be pleasant to think that Edmund Burke was familiar with the creations of Giambattista Piranesi when he wrote so searchingly of “The Sublime and Beautiful”; but, if this be perhaps an idle fancy, it is certainly true that it would not be easy to find concrete examples demonstrating more clearly than the etchings of Piranesi the truth of large parts of his enquiry, and in particular of the following definition of the sublime: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible, but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we every day experience.”

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate III

Size of the original etching, 21¼ × 16¼ inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate IV

Size of the original etching, 21½ × 16¼ inches

The application of these words to the work of Piranesi will probably surprise those persons acquainted only with his etchings of classic ruins. However, even these plates exemplify this definition in many ways which it would be tedious to enumerate, while to feel its full appositeness it is only necessary to study Piranesi’s least-known and greatest achievement, commonly called “The Prisons,” and known in Italian as “Le Carceri d’Invenzione.” These sixteen fantasies, executed at the age of twenty-two and published at thirty, form a set of prints in which it is no exaggeration to say that imagination is displayed with a power and amplitude that have elsewhere never been surpassed in etching or engraving, and only rarely in other forms of pictorial art. Although scarcely known to the public at large, they have always formed the delight of those who feel the appeal of imaginative fantasy, and notably of Coleridge and of De Quincey, who has recorded his impression in golden words. They are reputed to represent scenes which burned themselves into the artist’s consciousness while delirious with fever, and it is certain that they do possess that terrible, vivid reality, so enormously amplified as to lose the proportions of ordinary existence, which characterizes all oppressive dreams and particularly those induced by narcotics. They represent interiors of vast and fantastic architecture, complete yet unfinished, composed of an inexplicable complexity of enormous arches springing from massive piers built, like the arches they carry, of gigantic blocks left rough-hewn. By a contrast that could only have been conceived by genius these monstrous spaces are traversed in every direction by frail scaffoldings, together with ladders, bridges, and all manner of works in wood; and are filled, at the same time, with an inexhaustible succession of ropes, pulleys, and engines, finely described by De Quincey as “expressive of enormous power put forth or of resistance overcome.” They are distinguished by one of Piranesi’s greatest qualities, the power to express immensity as, perhaps, no one else has ever done, and are flooded with light which seems intense in its opposition to the brilliant shadows, so that altogether it would be difficult to understand their title of “Prisons,” were it not for the presence of engines of torment, and of mighty chains that twine over and depend from huge beams, or sometimes bind fast the little bodies of human beings. The unusual and inexplicable nature of these “Prisons” gives to the beholder’s imagination a mighty stimulus productive of strange excitement.

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate V

Size of the original etching, 21¼ × 16¼ inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VI

Size of the original etching, 21¼ × 15¾ inches

The “English Opium-Eater” in likening his visions to these pictures,—and what higher praise of their imaginative force could there be?—speaks of their “power of endless growth and self-reproduction.” One of their distinguishing peculiarities is this repetition of parts, as of things which grow out of themselves unceasingly, reproducing their parts until the brain reels at the idea of their endlessness. This characteristic, together with that curious opposition between their air of open immensity and their suggestion of prison-horror, gives them that particular appearance of absolute reality in the midst of impossibility, which is a distinctive feature of dreams. In this way they arouse a sense of infinitude in the mind of the beholder; now, although size is in itself of no importance, it is nevertheless true that, when combined with other qualities of value, “greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime.” This greatness, both in conception and in material execution, they possess, together with that opposition of light to obscurity which “seems in general to be necessary to make anything very terrible.” Indeed, that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor arouse a kind of awe in any one who gives them more than a passing glance, while the horror which they suggest is never physical so as to nauseate or “press too nearly” and cause pain, but imparts, on the contrary, a sense of danger and of terror that causes a delightful excitement, certainly fulfilling the definition of the sublime as given by Burke.

Although it does not follow that Piranesi is a greater etcher than Rembrandt, it may still be true that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor than is shown in those of the great Dutchman. They do not possess that subtle imagination which envelops everything that Rembrandt ever touched in an air of exquisite mystery, and gives to his least sketch an inexhaustible fund of suggestion, nor can they be compared to his etchings as consummate works of art; yet they do have a titanic, irresistible force of sheer imagination, which neither Rembrandt nor any other etcher, however superior in other ways, possessed to the same extent. Their preëminence in this one point is certainly admissible, and as it has been shown, presumably, that they are imaginative, original, and sublime, is it too much to say that, at least in the expression of certain intellectual qualities, Piranesi in these plates carried the art of etching to the highest point yet attained, so that no one who does not know these plates can know quite all that etching is capable of expressing?

“The Prisons” are also the most notable example of that principle of opposition, or contrast, of which Piranesi made so masterful a use in whatever he did. The application of this law in the handling, and at times in the abuse, of blacks and whites, is, of course, apparent to even the most casual observer in all that came from his hand. In the present series, however, this law may be seen carried to its utmost limit. From every stupendous vault there hangs a long, thin rope, while up gigantic pillars of rough masonry climb frail ladders of wood, and great voids between immense piers are spanned by light bridges, also of wood, bearing the slightest and most open of iron railings. In his plates of Roman ruins, Piranesi introduces the human figure dressed in the lovely costume of the eighteenth century, in order to contrast grace with force, and to oppose the living and the fugitive to the inanimate and the enduring; but here his use of the human figure rises to the truly dramatic. In the midst of these vast and awful halls with their air of stillness and of power, of “resistance overcome,” he places men who seem the smallest and the frailest among creatures. Grouped by twos or threes, whether depicted in violent motion or standing with significant gesture, they are always enigmatic in their attitudes, so that their presence and obvious emotion amid this immense and silent grandeur arouse a sense of tragic action, a feeling of mysterious wonder and curiosity that gives to all lovers of intellectual excitement a pleasure as keen as unusual. Particularly in one vision of a monstrous wheel of wood revolving in space, no one knows how, above a fragment of rocky architecture, while three human beings engaged in animated converse are obviously unconscious of the gigantic revolutions, the limits of fantasy are reached, and the mind turns instinctively to those images of the spheres rolling eternally in infinite space which are found in Milton and all mystic poets.

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate IX

Size of the original etching, 21½ × 16 inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VII

Size of the original etching, 21⅝ × 16⅛ inches

These plates are also interesting as a striking and curious proof of Piranesi’s conscious mastery of his art. They are filled with such a fury of imagination, and are etched with such dash and boldness of execution that it seems as though they must be, if not, as was once said, the sane work of a madman, at least burned directly on the plate by the force of a fever-stricken mind. But not so; they are, however fevered their original inspiration may have been, the result of careful elaboration, and are but one more proof of the saying of that other and still greater etcher, Whistler, that a work of art is complete, and only complete, when all traces have disappeared of the means by which it was created. There exists in the British Museum a unique, and until recently unknown, series of first states of “The Prisons.” Now, although these first states have the main outline and, as it were, the germ of the published states, these latter are so elaborated and, on the whole, improved, as to make it at first incredible that they could ever have grown out of, or had any relation to, the earlier states. The idea of vast masses of masonry is there, thrown on the paper with a simplicity of decorative effect and a directness of touch which have been lessened in the later work; but, on the other hand, all those scaffolds, engines of torment, and groups of men above described, are lacking, so that the power of contrast and the sense of terror, productive of the sublime, are entirely wanting, and are, therefore, shown to be the result of conscious art used by Piranesi in elaboration of an original inspiration.

Piranesi possessed a style so intensely individual that every print he produced is recognizable as his by any person who has ever looked at two or three of his plates with moderate attention, yet this style never degenerated into manner; that is to say, into an imitation not of nature, but of the peculiarities of other men or of one’s own earlier work. It became a manner or process in the hands of his son, Francesco, but with Giovanni Battista it always remained style, which is the expression of an original intellect observing nature before consciously varying the relations of elements drawn by it from nature, to the end of producing a work of art. This style, whose faults lie in excessive contrasts of black and white, in inadequate handling of skies, and, at times, in a certain general hardness of aspect, is marked by great boldness, breadth, and power, both in conception and in actual execution, but it is never marred by crudity or roughness. It is a remarkable fact that the immense force, which first of all impresses one in Piranesi’s work, does not exclude, but is, on the contrary, often combined or contrasted with extreme elegance and fineness of touch. To cite but one instance: in that wonderful print which forms the title-page of “The Prisons,”—the figure of the chained man, who imparts such a sense of terror to the whole scene, is handled with a grace and delicacy worthy of Moreau or any of those French contemporaries who filled the land with their exquisite creations for the endless delight of later generations. It is this contrast, together with his dramatic introduction and grouping of the human figure, which gives to Piranesi’s style a character that has been aptly qualified as scenic. An etching by Piranesi produces very much the same curious effect that a person experiences on entering a theater after the curtain has risen, so that he receives from the stage a sudden, sharp impression, not of a passing moment of the play, but of one distinct, dramatic picture. His etchings are never theatrical in the sense of something factitious and exaggerated beyond likeness to nature, but are always truly dramatic.

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VIII

Size of the original etching, 21½ × 15¾ inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate XI

Size of the original etching, 16 × 21½ inches

It will have been noticed that plates by Piranesi have been referred to both as etchings and engravings; this is because he used both etching and engraving in the same plate, a proceeding which, if decried by theoretical writers, has none the less been habitually employed by many of the greatest masters of both means of expression. Despite his faults and his Latin exuberance, Piranesi is technically one of the great etchers, in whose hands, particularly in certain plates in “The Prisons,” the etching-needle attained a breadth of vigorous execution that no one has surpassed. In judging an artist, the obvious precept, to consider what he was aiming to do, is unfortunately too often neglected. To expect of Piranesi either the incomparable delicacy of Whistler, or the unsurpassed crispness of Meryon would be futile, but he does possess certain forceful qualities which are not theirs. When he used the burin, he could handle it with the greatest precision and skill. In such a plate as the one known as The French Academy, the building is engraved with a skill not at all unworthy of the engravers who were at that time doing such wonderful work in France, while the plate, as a whole, gains a delightful quality,—that neither pure etching nor pure engraving could have given,—from the contrast which the sharp and delicately engraved lines make with the figures that are etched with a consummate freedom and dash worthy of Callot, who, one cannot but think, must have influenced Piranesi.

In his valuable monograph on Piranesi, Mr. Arthur Samuel makes the statement that “architectural etching has culminated with him”; and it is certain that in this field his work surpasses, both in architectural correctness and in artistic merit, any that has been done either before or since his day.

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate XIII

Size of the original etching, 16 × 21¾ inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate XIV

Size of the original etching, 16⅜ × 21½ inches

Part III

THE INFLUENCE OF PIRANESI ON DECORATION
IN THE XVIII CENTURY

There is still another side of Piranesi’s originality, public ignorance of which may be said to be complete—namely, his relation to architecture, and the very great debt owed him by that art. That he was an architect who signed himself as such on many plates during his entire life is a fact ignored even by many of those architects who are most indebted to him; but this fact is negligible, together with the work which he actually executed as an architect. The benefits which he conferred were rendered in other ways.

His first, and perhaps greatest, service consisted in the collection of materials. The classic motives which he gathered and etched form an inexhaustible store of ornament on which generation after generation of architects has drawn, and will continue to draw. The enormous quantity and variety of classic fragments of the best quality that Piranesi brought together is in itself astounding, but a fact of still greater importance is that it was he who, more than any one else, gave these motives currency. In his day no one, except Winckelmann—now known chiefly by his influence on Goethe, and by his tragic death—did as much as Piranesi to foster appreciation and spread knowledge of classic antiquity; while his plates, both by their greater currency and higher artistic merit, did wider and more enduring good than could ever be accomplished by the work of a critic and connoisseur, even of Winckelmann’s talent and prestige. His boundless enthusiasm and his real learning aroused more people than we shall ever know, at the same time that his labors, so indefatigable as to be incredible, spread abroad in prodigal profusion the reproductions of the remains of classic buildings, statues, and ornament. The greater part of these relics would have continued, but for him, to be known to only a few collectors and frequenters of museums; and it is certain that more classic motives have come into use, directly or indirectly, from the works of Piranesi than from any other one source, with the possible exception of modern photography.

In this connection it is impossible to insist too much on his exquisite taste, which, although it had its lapses, as in his designs for chimney-pieces, was on the whole of the highest. This fact seems quite incredible if the time and place of his life be considered. The intellectual degradation of all Italy at this period has already been alluded to, and, art being always a reflection and expression of contemporary life, it follows that the artistic degradation of Piranesi’s Italian contemporaries was complete. It is difficult to conceive the rococo horrors of eighteenth-century Italy. In France the most contorted productions of the Louis XV style, or the most far-fetched symbolic lucubrations under Louis XVI, never reached such depths of bad taste; for the French, in their most unfortunate moments, can never divest themselves entirely of an innate taste and a sense of measure which give some redeeming grace to their worst follies. The lack of tact, of a sense of limitations, which often characterizes Spanish and Italian art, and at times makes possible splendid flights never attempted by the French, also permits them, when misguided, to sink to abysmal depths. It would be hard to find much good in the heavy contortions of the rococo work of eighteenth-century Italy, which, starting from Bernini, exaggerated all his faults and kept none of even his perverted genius. Amid this riot of bad taste, Piranesi, with his love of classic simplicity, his sense of the noble, and his feeling for balance and distance, stands out an inexplicable phenomenon.

In certain plates, Piranesi, while using elements taken from antiquity, created a style of ornamental composition which inspired or was copied in work praised for its originality, and passing under the name of other styles. No one dreams of speaking of a Piranesi style, yet there is many a piece of decoration that calls itself Louis XVI, or Adam, or anything else, which comes directly from the work of this much-pilfered Italian. He stands in relation to a great deal of architectural decoration much as do, in science, those profound and creative minds who discover a great principle, but neglect its detailed application, only to have it taken up by lesser inventors of a practical trend, who put it to actual uses, the tangible value of which excites so great an admiration that no thought is taken of the man who discovered the very principle at the base of it all. In such plates as those dedicated to Robert Adam and Pope Clement XIII there can be found, fully developed, the style we call currently Louis XVI, although the greater part of it was produced under Louis XV contemporaneously with the work which goes by that name. The style in question is there, with its exquisite detail copied from the antique; we can see its inspiration taken from the classic which it wished to reproduce, together with its fortunate inability to do so, and its consequently successful creation of something entirely original but yet filled with classic spirit. That interruption of ornament, that alternation of the decorated and the plain, that sense of balance and of contrast, distinctive of the Louis XVI style—all are here. To think that these qualities came to Piranesi through French influence would be ridiculous, for the style under discussion obviously took for its model classic art, to which it was an attempted return; and as Piranesi was all his life in direct contact with the source of this inspiration, he could scarcely have been formed by a derivation of that which he knew directly.

If this be true, it may be asked why Piranesi’s work did not create in Italy at least sporadic attempts at a style analogous to that of Louis XVI. The reason for this lies in the already mentioned condition of the Italy of that day, for a work of art is absolutely conditioned by, and a result of, the environment in which it occurs. Here and there a work of art may, by some phenomenon, occur in opposition, or without apparent relation, to its surroundings; but in such circumstances it will have no successors, just as an unusually hardy orange-tree may thrive far to the north, but will not bear fruit and propagate itself. A great critic has said: “There is a reigning direction, which is that of the century; those talents who try to grow in an opposite direction find the issue closed; the pressure of public spirit and of surrounding manners compresses or turns them aside by imposing on them a fixed flowering.” The torpor and bad taste engendered in Italy by political and intellectual oppression precluded the work of Piranesi from bearing any fruit in his own country.

Statue of Piranesi, by Angelini, assisted by Piranesi’s son, and erected in the Church of Santa Maria in Aventino (Rome). It faces the great candelabra which Piranesi had designed to illuminate his statue. This plate was engraved by Piranesi’s son, Francesco, in 1790.

Size of the original engraving, 19⅞ × 12¾ inches

Piranesi. Antique Marble Vase

From “Vasi. Candelabri. Cippi. Sarcofagi. Tripodi. Lucerne ed Ornamenti Antichi Disegn. ed inc. dal Cav. Gio. Batta. Piranesi.” (1778) Vol. II, plate No. 73. Piranesi’s dedication of this plate reads: “Al Suo Carissimo Amico Il. Sig. Riccardo Hayward Scuttore Inglese.”

Size of the original etching, 24 × 16⅜ inches

To think, on the other hand, that Piranesi exerted an influence on French art of his day is not so fanciful as might at first be supposed. If it be true, as just stated, that it is impossible for the work of an artist to produce any result when his environment is hostile, it is equally true that an artist, or a body of artists, can exert an enormous influence when their surroundings favor and the ground is ready to receive the seed they sow. France was ripe for such seed as Piranesi cast abroad vainly in Italy, and in the former country an incalculable influence in the creation of the Louis XVI style was exerted by those men who accompanied Mme. de Pompadour’s brother, Abel Poisson, Marquis de Marigny, on his travels in Italy. Three years previously this great patron of art had caused her brother to be appointed to the succession of the “Surintendance des Beaux-Arts,” and after three years of apprenticeship, in order to make himself worthy of this important and exalted position, she sent him, in the company of a numerous suite, to Italy in December, 1749, to complete his education by remaining there until September, 1751. In his following were Soufflot, the architect, and Charles Nicholas Cochin fils, the celebrated engraver. On his return from Italy, M. de Marigny directed all the works of art undertaken by the government throughout France, while Soufflot built the church of Ste. Geneviève, now known as the Panthéon, and was one of the most conspicuous and influential men in the world of art in his day. Cochin, aside from being a great engraver, was intellectually one of the most interesting artists of the day, and, as M. de Marigny’s right-hand man, wielded an influence almost incomprehensible to us of to-day. The latter part of his life, he really ruled in M. de Marigny’s stead, and his absolute dictatorship in all matters of art in France can only be compared to that of Le Brun under Louis XIV.

That his Italian travels were the decisive influence of Cochin’s career is clearly shown in his own work, and is expressly stated by Diderot, who says of him that, “judge everywhere else, he was a scholar at Rome.” Soufflot was only seven years older than Piranesi, and Cochin but five. Now, when these distinguished Frenchmen were in Rome, Piranesi was already famous and frequented the most interesting artistic circles. His talents and his remarkably impetuous personality made him one of the curiosities of Rome, so that it is scarcely credible that these visiting foreigners should not have seen much of him. As their express object was the study of antiquity, and as no one in Rome knew more of the ruins or had so lively an enthusiasm for them as Piranesi, it is certainly probable that he influenced them deeply.

Section of one of the Sides of the Great Room, or Library,
of Earl Mansfield’s Villa at Kenwood

Robert Adam, Architect, 1767. Engraved by J. Zucchi in 1774
From “The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam.”
(London, 1778)

Ionic Order of the Anteroom, with the rest of the Detail of that Room
at Sion House, the Seat of the Duke of Northumberland
in the County of Middlesex

Robert Adam, Architect, 1761. Engraved by Piranesi
From “The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam.”
(London, 1778)

Aside from these men, the list is long of famous Frenchmen who studied in Rome during the height of Piranesi’s artistic production, and must certainly have felt his influence. It includes Augustin Pajou, the sculptor, who went to the Villa Médicis as Prix de Rome in 1748, at eighteen, and who afterward decorated the opera built at Versailles by Ange Gabriel, architect of the faultless buildings which ennoble the Place de la Concorde; Jean Jacques Caffieri, the sculptor, who was in Rome from 1749 to 1753; Chalgrin, Prix de Rome in 1758, successor to Soufflot as architect of the city of Paris, and architect of St. Philippe du Roule and of the Arc de Triomphe; Jean Antoine Houdon, the sculptor, Prix de Rome in 1761, at twenty, who came to America with Franklin to execute the statue of Washington now in Richmond; and finally Claude François Michel, known as Clodion, who gained the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1763 and filled whatever he touched with unrivaled grace, raising the art of terra-cotta figurines to a degree of loveliness no one else ever attained. It must be remembered that these architects and sculptors did not confine themselves to architecture pure and simple, as do our prouder and less talented contemporaries. With the spirit which animates all periods of great art, they considered no object too insignificant to be made lovely by their talent. They decorated theaters and houses, designing furniture, clocks, vases, and every article of daily life; filling them all with the consummate, delicate art that remains the despair of all who have followed. If, therefore, as is to be supposed, they underwent Piranesi’s influence while in Rome, it would have made itself felt, through them, in all the decorative arts of France.

If Piranesi’s influence in France be a subject for hypothesis, in England it can be decisively proved in the case of the so-called Adam style, a vulgar caricature of which is at present so prevalent in New York. Robert Adam, a Scotchman who studied in Rome, was so delightfully original and adventurous as to fit out an expedition to explore the then totally unknown Palace of Diocletian at Spalato in Dalmatia. He was also a friend of Piranesi, who dedicated his views of the Campus Martius to “Robert Adam, a British cultivator of architecture, as a proof of his affection.” Now Adam, a man of unusually alert mind and delicate taste, was a poor architect, with a most defective sense of proportion in the composition of a building as a whole, who nevertheless possessed unusual and distinctive talent as a decorator. His fine taste led him to cover his work with detail executed and often conceived by remarkable persons, so that much of the credit for originality and delicacy given to him is due, as with so many an architect, to the artists whom he had the cleverness and good fortune to employ and the ability to direct. In the preparation of his monumental book he was assisted by “Eques J. B. Piranesi,” as he there signs himself, who actually engraved three plates with his own hand, while the rendering of every design in the book shows his influence. Knowing this, it is impossible to doubt that Adam’s taste and style were profoundly influenced by, and indebted to, so original and masterly a mind as that of Piranesi.

A comparison of Adam’s book with certain plates by Piranesi will clearly show the debt, while a careful study of only three of his compositions—namely, the title-page before mentioned as dedicated to Adam and the two plates inscribed with the name of Pope Clement XIII—will in itself make clear that much decorative work called either Louis XVI or Adam takes its forms as well as its inspiration directly from the creations of Giambattista Piranesi. Piranesi’s influence can also be proved in the case of George Dance, architect of old Newgate Prison; of Robert Mylne, architect of old Blackfriars Bridge; of Sir John Soane, architect of the Bank of England; and of many more. The subject of Piranesi’s influence in England has been so exhaustively treated by Mr. Arthur Samuels in his monograph as to make useless any attempt to rehandle the subject here.

Piranesi. Title-page to “Il Campo Marzio dell’ Antica Roma”
(Rome, 1762)

The dedication to Robert Adam is upon the column to the left
Size of the original etching, 19⅞ × 13¼ inches

Piranesi. Upper left-hand Portion, bearing a Dedication to Robert Adam, of Piranesi’s
etched plan of the Campus Martius

Size of the original etching (of which the above is a part only), 53 × 45½ inches

Still another example of Piranesi’s influence is to be found in the sketches of the present-day German, Otto Rieth, the originality of whose drawings is so vaunted. Very talented and individual they certainly are, but to any one thoroughly familiar with the architectural fantasies of Piranesi, the source of inspiration is so obvious as to make it impossible that Rieth should not have known the work of his great Italian predecessor.

The influence which Piranesi exerts on the École des Beaux-Arts, and consequently on the leading contemporary architects of both France and the United States, is enormous, if hard to define. The use of detail which he furnishes is never-ceasing, but more important than this is the constant inspiration sought in a study of those architectural fantasies which he has filled with the qualities of grandeur and immensity so much valued by the French to-day. The buildings of New York are covered with motives either inspired by Piranesi or taken directly from his work—ornament much of which would never have come into vogue but for him; while a recent number of a leading architectural periodical, without acknowledgment, printed a design of his for its cover.

It is ardently to be hoped that a wider and more just appreciation of Piranesi’s unique work may gradually gain currency. Mere productiveness is, of course, of no intrinsic value; but that any human being should be capable of so vast a labor as Piranesi must in itself excite in us a lively sense of wonder and admiration. When, moreover, it is found that his work, in addition to putting the art of architecture under an enormous debt, is distinguished by imagination, originality, sublimity, and immense skill of execution,—a certain portion of it at least possessing these qualities to a degree unsurpassed by any artist using the particular medium employed,—it is surely not unreasonable to attribute to their creator the rare quality of original genius.

Note: I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Arthur Samuel of London, both for material contained in his book and for personal courtesy.