Veduta della Porta dell’antica Città di Pompei

Etching and engraving, 1789, from a subject by Louis-Jean Desprez.

Bottom left: Luigi Desprez delin. Bottom center: Veduta della Porta dell'antica Città di Pompei. Bottom right: Cav. Franc.o Piranesi incise 1789.

Magnificent proof, rich in tones, printed on laid paper with watermark "PM" (not well readable because of the strong inking of the sheet, but these are the initials of Pietro Milani of Fabriano, supplier of the paper for Piranesi. Robison dates them all between 1780 and 1790), with wide margins, in excellent condition.

A fine, exceptionally rare view of the excavations at Pompeii, executed by the son of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The view shows fashionably dressed, probably English, Grand Tourists viewing the splendid, recently excavated remains. Between 1764 and 1766, with the encouragement of the Bourbon rulers of Naples, digging began on the Theatre area, the Triangular Forum and the Temple of Isis, which would be fully brought to light in the first years of the next century. The city was soon popular with Grand Tourists and additional sites were opened in the north-west part of the city, where between 1760 and 1772 the insula occidentalis, the House of the Surgeon and the Villa of Diomede, along via dei Sepolcri, were partially explored. The cellar of the latter revealed 18 victims of the eruption, along with a treasure-trove of gold and silver coins. Louis Jean Desprez (1740-1804), trained as a stage designer and architect, was a talented watercolorist. Commissioned to do a series of views of the picturesque ruins surrounding the Bay of Naples, he completed this view of the temple if Isis in outline only, before travelling to Sweden under the patronage of Gustavus III. The copper plate was then worked up, completed and published by Francesco.

Francesco Piranesi (Rome, c. 1758 - Paris, January 1810), son and pupil of Giovan Battista, worked a great deal alongside his father, with whom he visited Pompeii in 1770. In 1799 he moved with his brother to Paris in flight from the political events related to the fall of the first Roman Republic; here the Calcografia Piranesi prints many plates made by Giovan Battista Piranesi and remained unpublished at the time of his death, including: Antiquitès de la Grande Grèce... (1804 -1807); Raccolta de' tempi antichi (1780); Il Teatro di Ercolano... (1783); Monumenti degli Scipioni (1785) and an anthology of the principal classical statues of Rome.

A great example.

Bibliografia

C.A. Petrucci, Catalogo Generale Delle Stampe Tratte Dai Rami Incisi Posseduti Dalla Calcografia Nazionale, 1021, p. 300 tav. 10, 1953; Focillon H., Giovanni Battista Piranesi, tav. 255, 1967; E. Benezit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessignateurs et Graveurs de tous les temps et de tous les Pays... nouvelle edition entiérement refondue sous la direction de Jacques Busse, Gründ 1999; L. Garcia y Garcia, Nova Bibliotheca Pompeiana, Roma 1998.