Topographia Capi Martii

Map from Il Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma.

A fine impression from the early roman edition, printed on contemporary laid paper, wide margins, in very good conditions.

Altought published in 1762, the genesis of this ambitious work extended back into the previous decade.
Significantly, as an exercise in speculative archaeology executed with contemporary architects in mind, the work originated in the highly productive relationship between Piranesi and Robert Adam. Not only was the folio dedicated to the British architect, but much of its material was assembled during Adam's studies with Piranesi in Rome between 1755 and 1757.

According to the considerable dedicatory preface, the author's objective was to examine the customs and environment of a vanished society through the study of its architectural remains.
The end product was a remakable series of hypothetical reconstructions, presented in plan, elevation, and perspective, in which Piranesi's imaginative faculties were stretched to the full.

Il Campo Marzio opens with 33 pages of learned discussion of literary authorities with parallel text in Latin and Italian. There follows a group of maps showing, stage by stage, the evolution of this site from primitive beginnings in the marshy site bounded by the curve of the Tiber to a densely monumental townscape of the utmost complexity and grandeur.

The climax is provided by the virtual fantasy of the Ichnographia, a vast six-plate purportedly representing the Campus Martius under the empire. The Ichnographia is supported by 37 plates of vedute and detailed surveys in which Piranesi presented the raw material on which this speculative act was based, often using the cramatic technique of isolating monumental fragments from the accretions of the medieval townscape.
To conclude Il Campo Marzio, Piranesi added for the first time in his antiquarian reconstructions a series of aerial perspective of selected parts of the Ichnographia, including one on the book's second title page. (J. Wilton Ely).