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