Volume 48, Number 10 · June 21, 2001
The Imaginary Builder
By John Updike
Piranesi and Architectural Fantasy
an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, April 7–September 9, 2001
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a frustrated architect; the most notable of his few commissions was for the restoration of the Church of Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome. Born in Venice in 1720, he moved to Rome in his early twenties and turned to the production of souvenir views, or vedute, of the city. Until his death in 1778 he remained a celebrant of Rome's massive buildings and ruins; he depicted them in an outpouring of etchings that, according to as impassive an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica, are 'the most original and impressive representations of architecture to be found in western art.' His first volume of representations, Architecture and Perspectives, Invented and Etched by Gio. Batt.a Piranesi, Venetian Architect, appeared in 1743 and consisted of twelve prints presenting idealized reconstructions of 'an ancient capitol,' 'a magnificent bridge,' 'an ancient temple,' 'an ancient mausoleum,' and so forth—Roman ruins extrapolated into a pristine, elaborately decorated timelessness.
Review, 1553 words
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