Giovanni Battista Piranesi was born on October 4, 1720 in the town of Mogliano Veneto near Venice, Italy, the son of a stonemason.[1] In 1735 he began to study architecture, at first with his uncle Matteo Lucchesi, who was an architect and the engineer responsible for the water management of the Venetian lagoon, afterwards with his uncle’s colleague Giovanni Antonio Scalfarotto (1777–1863).[2] In this circle, Piranesi acquired knowledge about the art and history of antiquity. He next learned the technique of etching and about theatrical scenic painting in the workshop of engraver Carlo Zucchi (1682–1767) and also came into contact with Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriani (1720?–before 1771 and ca. 1708–1761/62), who were known for their paintings of architecture. In the process, he most certainly also engaged with the frontal and diagonal perspective of stage designs by the Galli Bibiena family, whose influence can be seen in his own architectural fantasies. Additionally, Piranesi gained first important insights into publishing activities in Venice. He was in regular contact with the influential engraver Joseph Wagner (1706–1780), who worked in Venice.[3]
In 1740, the twenty-year-old Piranesi went to Rome for the first time as a draughtsman in the entourage of the Venetian envoy to the Holy See, Marco Foscarini, though he quickly realised that there were not too many good career prospects in the city’s architecture trades at the time. So he soon moved on to the workshop of the veduta engraver Giuseppe Vasi (1710–1782).[4] An enduring influence on Piranesi was his work from the beginning of the 1740s on Giuseppe Nolli’s outstanding map of Rome, published in 1748, where he gained significant experience in the area of topographical representation.[5] Following a disagreement with his teacher Vasi, Piranesi set up on his own. In 1743, when he was only 23, thanks to the support of his early patron and mentor Nicola Giobbe, he published Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive, a series of architectural fantasies.[6] Of significance for his artistic maturity appear to have been many stays in his native city of Venice from 1743 to 1747, during which time he came into contact with Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, among others. Tiepolo’s luminous and airy Venetian style as well as his reference to the Venetian tradition of the capriccio influenced Piranesi’s own drawings and etchings at that time.[7] At the beginning of his career between Rome and Venice, Piranesi worked on several works of prints, such as the Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna, first published in 1745, which fellows of the French Academy also worked on.[8]
After returning to Rome in September 1747, Piranesi set up his first workshop on the Corso. Subsequently, further series of prints were published, including the first plates of the Vedute di Roma, still popular with tourists in Rome today, and in 1749–1750 the first edition of the now famous “imaginary prisons”, Le Carceri appeared, praised today for their expressiveness and “modernity”.[9]
Piranesi’s great interest in archaeology is very apparent in several series of prints devoted to ancient architecture and building decoration. In this context, Piranesi had carried out excavations and measured entire buildings as well as partially preserved elements of buildings, drawn them himself, or had them drawn by assistants. For example, the four-volume Antichità Romane, contains ancient fragments and plans alongside vedutas of ancient ruins in Rome. He also attempted to undertake reconstructions and staged fantastic imaginings of antiquity, which were certainly inspired by his training as a stage designer. Further, he devoted entire publications to individual ancient sites in and around Rome, such as the Field of Mars, the ancient columned monuments, the sites of Albano, Castel Gandolfo, Cori, and the Greek temples of Paestum. Other publication projects, which he began working on towards the end of his career, were somewhat later continued and published by his son Francesco.
In all these undertakings, Piranesi always understood himself as an architect. This is confirmed by his signature “archittetto veneziano” or “archittetto romano”, which he used until around the beginning of the 1760s, and unmistakably by his own architectural designs. In 1763, Pope Clement XIII (Pope 1758–1769) commissioned him to draw up designs for the remodelling of San Giovanni in Laterano, but these were not implemented at the time due to funding difficulties. In the following years, 1764–1766, Piranesi was commissioned by the Pope's nephew Giovanni Battista Rezzonico (1740–1783), Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta, to redesign the forecourt and the church of Santa Maria del Priorato on the Aventine.
The fact that Piranesi also excelled as a designer or decorative artist is evident not only by his drawings of extravagant console tables, clocks, and sedan chairs, but also by the large number of fireplace designs, some of which he published in the book of plates Diverse Maniere d'adornare i cammini, first published in 1769. He even had fireplaces made to his designs in marble, most of which he sold to wealthy travellers on their Grand Tour around Italy.
In addition, Piranesi composed idiosyncratic, classical antiquity-style candelabra and vase sculptures (see Pasticcio), the designs of which he published in the two-volume work Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi, published in 1778. Some of these objects were crafted by Antoine Guillaume Grandjaquet (1731–1801), Annibale Malatesta (ca. 1754– to after 1825), and Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (ca. 1716–1799). They were made in marble and were for sale; sometimes they included fragments of ancient originals. However, the production of marbles far exceeded the works published in Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi. Although a large number of these sculptural compositions have been preserved in various collections, until now no major drawings of these spectacular inventions were known, except for a few minor sketches.
Suffering from serious illness, Giovanni Battista Piranesi died in Rome on November 9, 1778. His studio, which he had set up in 1761 in Palazzo Tomati on Strada Felice (today’s Via Gregoriana, above the Spanish Steps), was initially continued by his eldest son Francesco Piranesi, who also published books of plates in the tradition of his father.[10]
Little is known about the history of the studio’s development during the 1790s. Francesco gradually sold the marble objects and fragments that were kept in the studio, and according to sources, other material was looted during the two Neapolitan invasions of Rome (November 1798 and July 1799).[11] By 1797 at the latest, the Piranesi family is mentioned in Strada Felice in the Stati delle Anime.[12] After the collapse of the Roman Republic in 1799, Francesco and his brother Pietro Piranesi, who were actively involved in political events on the side of the Jacobins, moved to Paris.[13] It was probably within this context and before his return to Baden[14] in June 1797 that Friedrich Weinbrenner (1766–1826) acquired the drawings that are in his albums, which are now in the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.[15]
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