Gurari Collections

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Italian etcher, engraver, designer, architect, archaeologist, and theorist. Although Piranesi is considered one of the supreme exponents of topographical engraving, often compared with Rembrandt for his painterly approach, his lifelong preoccupation with architecture was fundamental to his art. Born outside of Venice, Piranesi was apprenticed to his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, a leading designer and hydraulics engineer. He later studied with Giovanni Scalfurotto, a Palladian architect, and Giuseppe and Domenico Valeriano, brother followers of the note Galli-Bibiena family of stage set designers. Piranesi came into his own in Rome, where he moved as a young man and where he produced the majority of his work. His graphic output of more than a thousand plates ranges from exquisite linearity and subtle nuances of Rococo fantasy to the fierce striations and powerful tonality of Romantic Classicism. His Baroque temperament found the bozzetto or rapid sketch a natural form of expression. Peers remarked on his lack of preparatory drawings and the virtuosity of his improvisations on the plates. One of the most versatile draftsman of the eighteenth century, Piranesi left between 600 and 700 drawings. He became the leading vedutista in Rome and in 1761 set up his own printmaking business on Via Sistina. His clientele included numerous foreign patrons, among them the British architects Robert Adam and William Chambers, who incorporated Piranesi’s interpretations of antiquity in their work.

The Arch of Constantine
by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The Tomb of Cecilia Metella
by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, Interior
by Giovanni Battista Piranesi