Selected etchings by Piranesi, series 2

INTRODUCTION

Reading edition

The demand which followed the issue of the first series of small reproductions of Piranesi’s etchings has tempted the Publishers to put forth a further selection. The mine is, indeed, inexhaustible, but all the etchings, though of great individual interest, are not of equal value to architects. For them Piranesi serves two main purposes: the first, a stimulus to the imagination; the second, a store of rich and expressive detail. In this selection, to assist in the first purpose, are included a few of his own architectural designs. These do not, however, in reality exhibit his great imaginative qualities so well as his interpretations of actual buildings. Although Piranesi was careful to see that he was always styled “Venetian Architect,” we have no very reliable evidence that he ever composed a building except on paper, and such paper plans as he published do not suggest great practical qualities. It is in his drawings of the ruins of ancient Rome that he gives us something at once more rare and more valuable than any ordinary architectural achievement. In them he shows us the inherent romance buried deep in Roman construction. Through him we learn the spiritual character of this construction when stripped of all its worldly ornament. It is true that in his drawings the buildings have another sort of decoration—a decoration of trees and foliage. In the eighteenth century the ruins had not yet been cleaned and docketed into museum specimens, but the romance which Piranesi reveals in arch, vault, and dome is something deeper than a mere picturesque contrast with foliage and figures. The romance he shows us is the romance of any enduring monument. It is the monumental quality of Roman construction which makes it akin to the great works of Nature, and the trees and vegetation in Piranesi drawings only help to demonstrate this kinship. The gesticulating figures serve a similar purpose. They are the men of a lesser generation gibbering over the work of ancestors they only half comprehend.

The other and more prosaic service which Piranesi can still render to architects, and especially in these days of neo-Classic detail, is by means of his careful drawings of antique ornaments and vases from his own and his friends’ collections. Here he not only provides us with an immense fund of detail, but he draws that detail in a way which gives us at once the very essence of its character. It is a character all may not love, but few can avoid feeling how suitable it is to the age in which we live.

C. H. R.