GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI. – Architect and engraver, born at Mojano di Mestre on 4 Oct. 1720, died in Rome on 9 Nov. 1778.
He initiated certain aspects of the neoclassical taste in Rome, both as an architect and as a student of the decorative forms of Roman art, which later became the basis of the so-called Empire style; yet it is for the fantastic luminism and picturesque colouring of his passionate evocations of ancient, Renaissance and Baroque Rome that he holds first place among the *vedutisti* of the 18th century and seems to anticipate the Romantic spirit. Trained in the neo-Palladian milieu of Venice, he went to Rome in 1740 as draughtsman to the Venetian embassy and began to devote himself to engraving; but his formation received its definitive stamp from his study of the scenographic engravings of F. Gaspari and M. Ricci in Venice, and from his acquaintance with Tiepolo’s *Capricci* and the etchings of Rembrandt and Castiglione, from which he derived that free and rapid handling of the burin that was lacking in his first published engravings: *Prima parte di architetture e di prospettive* (Rome 1743). Returning to Rome forthwith, he devoted himself to his most singular work, the *Invenzioni capricciose di carceri* (1745), in which architect and poet join hands to produce an extraordinary creation of constructive science and imaginative fantasy. Soon afterwards he published the *Antichità romane dei tempi della Repubblica e dei primi Imperatori* (1748), which, alongside a few engravings by others, contains in rapid etchings his memories of travel. Meanwhile he was at work on a monumental publication, *Le antichità romane* (4 vols., 1756, with 216 plates), of which the *Rovine del Castello dell'acqua Giulia* (1771), the *Campo Marsio dell'antica Roma*, and the *Descrizione e disegno dell'emissario del Lago Albano* (1762) are but continuations; and the *Vedute di Roma*, to which he devoted himself from 1748 (2 vols., 1778), the completion. In these engravings there appears the Rome of his dream, in the imposing ruins of the Roman period and in the monuments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, transfigured by his imagination into an emotional evocation of grandeur, with giant stage-sets in the foreground and vertiginous perspectival flights.
Piranesi’s work as historian and polemicist is remarkable for the acuteness and modernity of his insights. In *Della magnificenza ed antichità de' Romani* (1761, with 40 plates) and in *Osservazioni... sopra la lettera di M. Mariette* (1764) he upholds the originality of Roman architecture in comparison with Greek, and seeks to define the distinctive characteristics of each. In his last years he made a special study of the decorative forms of Roman art: *Diverse maniere d'adorare i camini* (1769); *Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, trofei, tripodi, lucerne ed antichi ornamenti* (1778), which contributed to the formation of the taste for neoclassical decoration. Also noteworthy is the *Raccolta di alcuni disegni del Barbieri da Cento detto il Guercino* (1764).
Piranesi executed only one architectural work: the reorganization of S. Maria del Priorato of the Order of Malta on the Aventine, entrusted to him in 1765 by Cardinal Rezzonico. The restrained and harmonious proportions, the clear articulation of the exterior and interior spaces, rich in garlands and figured bas-reliefs, stand as an early expression of neoclassical taste in Rome, as do the piazza and entrance to the Villa dei Cavalieri with its classical trophies alternating with the worn compartments of the balustrade. The publication of his collected works was continued by his son FRANCESCO (b. in Rome in 1758 or 59, d. in Paris on 27 Jan. 1810), who also undertook the engraving of unpublished drawings and, having moved to Paris at the end of the 1760s, established there the *Chalcographie des P. frères*, with an engraving school and a pottery workshop that enjoyed lively and active life.