Volume 26, Number 13 · August 16, 1979
Piranesi's Year
By Hugh Honour
Piranesi
Exhibition catalogue by John Wilton-Ely
Arts Council of Great Britain at The Hayward Gallery (London), 135 pp., £5.50
Piranesi: The Early Architectural Fantasies 1978-October 1, 1978
exhibition at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), June 1,
Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library
by Felice Stampfle
Dover in association with the Pierpont Morgan Library, 121 pp., $7.50
Piranesi: Incisioni, rami, legature, architetturae
Exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice), edited by Alessandro Bettagno
Neri Pozza (Vicenza), 373 pp., 15,000 Lire
Disegni di Giambattista Piranesi
Exhibition catalogue, Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice), edited by Alessandro Bettagno
Neri Pozza (Vicenza), 93, 85 pl pp., 5,000 Lire
Piranèse et les français, colloque tenu à la Villa Médicis
edited by Georges Brunel
Edizioni dell'Elefante (Rome), 611 pp., 70,000 Lire
Piranesi
by Jonathan Scott
St. Martin's Press, 336 pp., $50.00
Piranesi
by Nicholas Penny
Oresko Books Ltd. (London), 96 pp., $9.95 (paper)
The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi
by John Wilton-Ely
Thames and Hudson, 304 pp., $39.95
Archäologie des Traums: Versuch über Giovanni Battista Piranesi
by Norbert Miller
Hanser Verlag (Munich), 492 pp., DM 68
Rome: The Biography of Its Architecture from Bernini to Thorvaldsen
by Christian Elling
Westview Press, 532, 212 illus pp., $65.00
Piranesi year is over. His drawings and etchings have returned to their solander boxes in the print rooms of Europe and America, his great bound folios have been put back in place and—presumably—additional shelving has been set up to support the weight of the avalanche of recent publications devoted to him. Specialist students all over the world seem to have taken the opportunity to expound their diverse theories, and to promise such further productions as complete catalogues raisonnés of his prints and drawings. His current popularity is, nonetheless, difficult to explain. He was a masterly draftsman and etcher but hardly to be compared artistically—though some enthusiasts do compare him—with Tiepolo and Canaletto, let alone Rembrandt and Goya. The vast majority of his etchings, and those on which his fame in his own day was founded, are of Roman Imperial architecture which does not at present arouse much admiration from either scholars or the general public. His works of architectural theory were too confused and eccentric to have ever had much influence. As an archaeologist he was more imaginative than scientific. And although he styled himself an architect, his 'practice' was limited to refurbishing a single, quite small building, Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome, which cannot be described as a masterpiece.
Review, 5660 words
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