Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Giambattista Piranesi also (* October 4, 1720 in Mogliano Veneto at Treviso; † November 9, 1778 in Rome ) was an Italian engraver, archaeologist, architect and architectural theorist.

Life

Piranesi was born the son of a stonemason. His brother Angelo taught him Latin and the foundations of ancient literature. His training as an architect, he began on Magistrato Acque with a brother of his mother, Matteo Lucchesi, a Venetian civil engineer, who was responsible for the regulation of the lagoon. After he had fallen in a dispute with his uncle, he continued his education at Scalfarotto Giovanni ( 1670-1764 ). In a further embodiment, the stage designer, he learned the ways of the stage decoration know. This allowed him an intense preoccupation with the art of illusion and perspective. At this time arrived in Venice - in particular by Canaletto - The Art of vista to a climax.

In 1740 he traveled as a draftsman in the wake of Marco Foscarini, the Venetian envoy to the Holy See, to Rome. He took up his quarters in the Palazzo Venezia and began with the study of Roman architecture. Very soon realized Piranesi that the prospects for architects in Rome were very bad. Opportunities arose rather in the field of painting, especially by the incipient Romtourismus. A year after his arrival in Rome, he began an apprenticeship at the Giuseppe Vasi Vedutenzeichner, who taught him the basics of etching and engraving. However, Piranesi fell out very soon with Vasi and broke the training in the workshop from. Along with fellows of the French Academy, he worked on a series of smaller views of Rome, which then appeared in 1745 as Varie vista di Roma Antica e Moderna. Already in 1743 he published his first work, Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive - cityscapes in a compound of graving and etching. He dedicated the work to Nicola Giobbi, a Venetian building contractor who had supported him since his arrival in Rome.

From 1743 to 1747 he lived mostly in Venice, where he also worked with Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Finally, he returned to Rome, where he opened a shop on the Via del Corso. In the years 1748-1774 he created more episodes vedutas baroque and ancient monuments of Rome, the vista di Roma - mostly lit by hard sunlight - to develop a peculiar monumental effect. These vistas include pictures compositions in the nature of the Caprices. 1756 explored and measured Piranesi countless buildings of ancient Rome. Result was the publication of views Roman antiquities in four volumes, the novels Antichità.

On February 24, 1757 he was inducted into the Society of Antiquaries of London, and in 1761 the Roman Accademia di San Luca. In the same year he set up a new studio with its own print shop. In a Catalogo delle Opere he exhibited his etchings along with prices.

1763 issued by Pope Clement XIII. Piranesi for the rebuild of the choir of San Giovanni in Laterano. About the design stage, however, he did not reach out. The following year, Piranesi was commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rezzonico with the redesign of Santa Maria del Priorat. 1767 suggested the Pope him a knight.

Three of his children, Laura, Francesco and Pietro Piranesi were also well-known and successful artists.

Work

Vista of the Quirinal

Vista of the Forum of Nerva

Celebrity today gained Piranesi especially with the sixteen plates of the Carceri ( dungeons ) 1745-1750, excited by stage sets architectural fantasies that. Noticeable that even in the vedutas feeling of loneliness, coupled with monumentality, to extremes They influenced the new prison was built in Newgate in 1770, the horrors of the Bastille were used in prints for display and finally make their mark in the film of 20th century architecture. The originally rather pale -scale plates of the Carceri were reworked in 1761 at the instigation of Piranesi publisher Bouchard, to make it darker and konstrastreicher and thus to achieve a theatralischere effect. Most reproductions of the Carceri give these later state.

But much more extensive were his documentation of ancient buildings and artifacts in and around Rome, Cora and Paestum, the artists throughout Europe were used as templates for your own work.

From Carceri

From Carceri

The Drawbridge

Publications

• Antichità romane de ' tempi della repubblica e de' primi imperatori (1748 ).
• Alcune vedute di archived trionfali, ed altri monumenti inalzati da parte de quali si veggono in Roma e per l' Italia parte (1748 ).
• Opere varie di architettura, prospettiva, grote ski, ANTICHITA. 4 volumes. Rome ( 1750).
• Carceri (1750 ).
• Trofei Ottaviano Augusto innalzati per la vittoria ad actium e conquista dell ' Egitto con altri varj ornamenti diligently ricavati dagli avanzi piu preziosi fabbriche delle Antiche di Roma utili a pittori, Scultori architetti ed (1753 ).
• Le antichità novels (1756 ).
• Di Lettere scritte giustificatione a Milord Charlemont e à di lui agenti in Roma ( 1757).
• Le rovine del castello dell ' Acqua Giulia situato in Roma presso S. Eusebio e falsamente detto dell' Acqua Marcia colla dichiarazione di uno de ' celebri passi del comentatio frontiniano e sposizione della maniera con cui gli antichi Romanized distribuiva le uso della città acque by ( 1761).
• De Romanorum magnificentia et architectura (1761 ).
• Campus Martius Antiquae urbis ( 1762).
• Lapides capitolini immersive fasti consulares triumphalesq Romanorum urbe condita from usque ad tiberium caesarem ( 1762).
• Antichità di Cora ( 1764).
• Antichità d' Albano e di Castel Gandolfo ( 1764).
• Osservazioni di Gio. Battista Piranesi sopra la Lettre de Monsieur Mariette aux auteurs de la Gazette Littéraire de l'Europe ( 1765 ).
• Della introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti ne in Europe ' tempi antichi ( 1765 ).
• Differentes vues de quelques restes de trois grands qui edifices subsistent encore dans le milieu de l' ancienne ville de pesto autrement Possidonia qui est dans la située Lucanie ( 1778).