Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778)

[Antique print, etching, Piranesi] Iscrizioni de’ Liberti, e Servi della Famiglia di Augusto. (inscripties op steen, grafkamer), published 1756-1784, 1 p.

Name: [Antique print, etching, Piranesi] Iscrizioni de' Liberti, e Servi della Famiglia di Augusto. (inscripties op steen, grafkamer), published 1756-1784, 1 p.
SKU: PR120816
Availability: OutOfStock

Plate XXX from the III out of four volumes collection Le Antichità Romane collecting plates by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, firstly published by Angelo Rotili in Rome between 1756 and 1757. The second edition appeared in 1784. Original wide margins, no traces of binding or folding. Two plates, one with the illustration, the second below with the description.

Titled below: ‘Iscrizioni de’ Liberti, e Servi della Famiglia di Augusto.’

Signed on the bottom right: ‘Piranesi Architetto dis. ed inc.‘.

“The excavation campaigns that in 1726 had brought to light the sepulchral chambers of the Augusto family on the ancient Via Appia were illustrated by the detailed publications of Francesco Bianchini and Anton Francesco Gori from 1727 and in the engravings designed by Pier Leone Ghezzi published in 1731. If in the case of Bianchini attention was paid to the survey of the architectural structure and construction techniques, and to the detailed documentation of the inscriptions and tombstones, leaving out instead the rich heritage of funerary materials found, in the works of Gori and Ghezzi these finds are the object of detailed and faithful illustrations. It is important to note that Gori’s volume constitutes for Ghezzi and, through the latter, for Piranesi, the reference for the finds, as is evident from the transmission from one work to another of the same changes made on the original drawing of the objects that can be found in cases where these have been traced. But, dealing here only with the engravings relating to the description of the finds, Ghezzi’s volume is based on graphic solutions that reveal a very effective illustrative criterion, different from the documentative and plainly didactic intent of its predecessors, and which shows the clear reference to a modern not surprisingly, this approach is that of the museum arrangement of the pontifical collections inaugurated in 1734 in Palazzo Nuovo, which we can still see in the Sala dei Filosofi of the Musei Capitolini. Piranesi draws inspiration from the new method of representation of the finds – objects chosen for their historical-artistic value, categorized, museumized, and arranged on marble shelves and offered to the public – but introducing stylistic choices such as the affected chiaroscuro and the casual arrangement marble fragments, funerary stones, urns and reliefs -disomogeneous by class, size, state of conservation- in a different reciprocal relationship and between objects and space, between objects and the spectator; a balance that can be defined as narrative because it is capable of generating a reading of their aesthetic and historical value. Narrative also because it transmits – considering the news, the literary source, an integral part of the report of the excavations – the emotional temperature, the wonder, the intense interest felt by contemporaries in the uncovering of such an extraordinary heritage: thus the skeleton in the terracotta sarcophagus in the plate XXX (cat.172) is not only a picturesque and dramatic notation, but refers to the direct evidence of the discoveries, such as the one provided by Francesco Ficoroni himself about the excavation in the Moroni vineyard: “The most curious one you observe in the aforementioned mine of burial chambers, it is that in the sides under the floor and mostly outside around them, there were entire corpses of ordinary people covered with tiles composed like huts and in their mouths between their teeth they had bronze medals bricks of the first emperors and august women, donations “(Battaglia 1996, p. 71). […]” [Mariasole Garacci, ICG]

Translated title: A. Inscriptions of the freedmen and slaves of the family of Augustus…

SKU: PR120816

Etching with some interventions in burin on hand laid paper, with broad margins; plate with illustration: 385 x 478 mm; text plate: 47 x 481 mm; total 560 x 802 mm; somewhat frayed end margins, otherwise in great condition. Visible watermark.

€ 254,10 (€ 210,00 ex. btw)

Out of stock