Giovanni Battista Piranesi

One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect and received training in engineering from a uncle who was employed by the Venetian waterworks, while his brother, a Carthusian monk, inspired an enthusiasm for the ancient Romans. Soon after his arrival in Rome in 1740, he apprenticed himself briefly to Giuseppe Vasi, the foremost producer of the etched views of Rome. Quickly mastering the medium of etching, Piranesi found in it an outlet for all his interests, from designing fantastic complexes of buildings that could exist only in dreams , to reconstructing in painstaking detail the aqueduct system of the ancient Romans. The knowledge of ancient building methods demonstrated by Piranesi’s archaeological prints allowed him to make a name for himself as an antiquarian—Etching also provided Piranesi with a livelihood, allowing him to turn one of his favorite activities, drawing the ancient and modern buildings of Rome, into a lucrative source of income. By 1747, was best known for, the Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome), and he continued to produce plates for the series until the year of his death in 1778. Piranesi explored the possibilities of perspective and spatial illusion while pushing the medium of etching to its limits. It seems that the artist’s tireless devotion to his work and his identification with the grandeur of Rome never flagged.