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Prints · 18th century
Veduta del ponte, e del Mausoleo, fabbricati da Elio Adriano Imp.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) · From Le Antichità Romane
Artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) Technique Copperplate engraving Paper Laid paper, no watermark State First state Date 1756–7 Dimensions 28½ × 20 inches (sheet); 25½ × 18 inches (plate) Condition Good strong early impression, richly inked. Full margins, original centrefold reinforced on verso, paper bright and crisp, likely washed. Unframed and unmounted.
A fine example of Piranesi’s etching of the Castel Sant’ Angelo — the medieval refuge for the popes built atop the mausoleum constructed for the emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century AD.
Piranesi was born in Venice to a family of stonemasons, architects, and engineers, and his early apprenticeships in these fields laid the foundation for his later artistic work. It was in Rome, surrounded by the remnants of the Classical past, that Piranesi found his métier, and in a series of some one thousand etchings over the course of 30+ years Piranesi became synonymous with the romanticisation of ruins and the rediscovery of the material remains of antiquity that helped fuel the Grand Tour in the second half of the 18th century. Piranesi was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in London in 1757.
Focillon 339; Wilton-Ely 472.
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