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
