Descrizione e Disegno dell'Emissario del Lago Albano
| Reference: | S49957 |
| Author | Giovan Battista PIRANESI |
| Year: | 1762 |
| Zone: | Title Page |
| Printed: | Rome |
| Measures: | 270 x 425 mm |
€800.00
| Reference: | S49957 |
| Author | Giovan Battista PIRANESI |
| Year: | 1762 |
| Zone: | Title Page |
| Printed: | Rome |
| Measures: | 270 x 425 mm |
€800.00
Description
Etching, 1762, signed on plate at lower left.
Title page from the work Descrizione e Disegno dell’Emissario del Lago Albano di Gio Battista Piranesi.
Like the treatise devoted to the water system of the Acqua Giulia, this work was produced by Piranesi to celebrate a major achievement of Roman engineering-in this case the emissarium or drainage outlet of Lake Albano. According to Livy, the Romans, while besieging Veii in 398 B.C., had responded to an oracle which required the level of the lake to be lowered in order for victory to be assured them. Within a year they had dug an outlet in the form of a tunnel, five feet high by three feet broad and some 1,531 yards in length. The fact that this epic feat was achieved some two and one-half centuries before the con- quest of Greece encouraged Piranesi to devote all his graphic skills to revealing the ingenuity of construction as well as the triumphant survival of this work, which still remained in use. He, therefore, provided a sequence of plates combining plans, cross-sections, reconstructed elevations and modern views of the inlet and outlet structures. Several of these complex diagrams required large fold-out plates of the kind already used in the polemical work Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de'Romani of 1761, wherein the Emissario was first featured . Other diagrams indicate the various stages of boring the drain below the original water level and the problems of removing the spoil by means of a series of transverse shafts. Included among these technical data are a number of Piranesi's most dramatic vedute, exploiting the maximum rhetoric in support of his passionate belief in Roman originality.
Magnificent example, printed on contemporary laid paper, in excellent condition.
Bibliografia
H. Focillon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1918), n. 480; Wilton-Ely n. 613.
Giovan Battista PIRANESI (Mogliano Veneto 1720 - Roma 1778)
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Italian etcher, engraver, designer, architect, archaeologist and theorist. He is considered one of the supreme exponents of topographical engraving, but his lifelong preoccupation with architecture was fundamental to his art. Although few of his architectural designs were executed, he had a seminal influence on European Neo-classicism through personal contacts with architects, patrons and visiting artists in Rome over the course of nearly four decades. His prolific output of etched plates, which combined remarkable flights of imagination with a strongly practical understanding of ancient Roman technology, fostered a new and lasting perception of antiquity. He was also a designer of festival structures and stage sets, interior decoration and furniture, as well as a restorer of antiquities. The interaction of this rare combination of activities led him to highly original concepts of design, which were advocated in a body of influential theoretical writings. The ultimate legacy of his unique vision of Roman civilization was an imaginative interpretation and re-creation of the past, which inspired writers and poets as much as artists and designers.
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Giovan Battista PIRANESI (Mogliano Veneto 1720 - Roma 1778)
|
Italian etcher, engraver, designer, architect, archaeologist and theorist. He is considered one of the supreme exponents of topographical engraving, but his lifelong preoccupation with architecture was fundamental to his art. Although few of his architectural designs were executed, he had a seminal influence on European Neo-classicism through personal contacts with architects, patrons and visiting artists in Rome over the course of nearly four decades. His prolific output of etched plates, which combined remarkable flights of imagination with a strongly practical understanding of ancient Roman technology, fostered a new and lasting perception of antiquity. He was also a designer of festival structures and stage sets, interior decoration and furniture, as well as a restorer of antiquities. The interaction of this rare combination of activities led him to highly original concepts of design, which were advocated in a body of influential theoretical writings. The ultimate legacy of his unique vision of Roman civilization was an imaginative interpretation and re-creation of the past, which inspired writers and poets as much as artists and designers.
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