Scenographia Campi Martii veterum aedificiorum reliquias ostendens e ruderibus nostrique aevi aedificijs exemptas cum ejusde

Etching, engraving and drypoint, circa 1762, signed in plate at lower left.

Magnificent proof, printed on contemporary laid paper with watermark "double circle and lily with letters CB" (Robison 35), with margins, usual traces of vertical folds, in excellent condition.

Plate taken from Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma opera di G.B. Piranesi socio della Real Società degli Antiquari di Londra.

One of the most important plates of the work, certainly the most fascinating. The setting of the Campus Martius opens to a wonderful space, creating an aerial perspective of the area behind a fascinating assemblage of reconstructions of ruins and artifacts. Among these is the broken shaft of the obelisk of Psammeticus II, which the Emperor Augustus had erected in the heart of the Campus Martius, using it as a sundial, and which Pope Benedict XIV had dug up in 1748.

Although published only in 1762, this fundamental work, which appears to be one of Piranesi's most complex, had already been announced by the artist in the Antichità Romane (1756) of which, according to Focillon, it can be considered as the fifth volume.

The story of the Campus Martius is intertwined with the friendship with the Scotsman Robert Adam, to whom the work is dedicated. Adam had arrived in Rome in 1755 and soon got to know Piranesi, perhaps through their mutual friend Charles-Louis Clerisseau, finding in their common archaeological passion the basis of a mutual esteem, which continued even after the architect's return to London. It was Adam himself who, during the reconnaissance of the remains of the monuments of the Campus Martius, suggested to Piranesi the idea of creating a map of the entire area, which initially was to be included in the Antiquities, and then ended up forming the basis of a much more ambitious project, giving birth to this important work. In the initial writings the author announces the purpose of this work, stating the will to trace the history of this vast area between the Tiber and the hills, trying to reconstruct the conformation and the face. He underlines the difficulty of this reconstruction work, since the ancient Campus Martius coincided with the most intensely populated and rebuilt area of the city from the Middle Ages to the present time, not hiding the margin of hypothetic inherent in the work. The result is that the reliability of the results remains very problematic, both for the pioneering archaeological research of the time, and for the visionary charge that leads the artist and the architect to overcome the limits of historical reality designing the past in function of the present, bringing the artistic genius to prevail by far on the archaeologist, giving sense and vigor to the whole work.

Literature

Focillon 437, Wilton Ely 568.