An atemporal approach to Piranesi and his designs

Adam Lowe

The Grotto Chair was As you arrive on San Giorgio Maggiore you are candelabri, cippi (Rome, 1778): a tripod based
modeled by hand by
Juan Carlos Andrés Arias confronted by Palladio’s beautiful and majestic closely on the antique, an altar based on fragments
over a period of one year. church of San Giorgio. This Venetian landmark was found in the Villa Adriana, a candelabrum and
During this time many
subtle design issues were built from Palladio’s designs but not completed un- a giant vase. In these designs after the antique it
resolved as the details til 1610, 30 years after his death. At the time there was common practice for Piranesi to use his con-
were formed, discussed
and refined was nothing unusual about this. It has taken several noisseurship to reconstruct complete objects from
centuries of museum culture to turn rich and varied fragments. The resulting objects celebrate his pro-
“subjects” into discrete “objects” located in a spe- lific creative energy as an architect/designer. His
cific time and attributed to a specific hand. In the forensic approach to objects as a reliable source of
eighteenth century Piranesi resisted this emerging information has had a profound influence on subse-
tendency. In thousands of images and throughout quent generations of artists, architects, designers,
his controversial texts, he asserted the importance decorators and film-makers. The greatness of this
of looking in depth into the complex and reveal- pre-modern figure lies in his ability to read objects,
ing biographies of cultural artefacts. His way of to move beyond issues of national or cultural iden-
engaging with things was anachronic and the knowl- tity, beyond the “tyranny of theory”, in order to
edge he derived from physical objects informed his fuse a wealth of influences that made Rome the ex-
thoughts on antiquity, the Renaissance and the traordinarily fertile place it was, both in antiquity
Rome he inhabited. and inside Piranesi’s mind.
The creation of a group of objects for the exhibi- Looking at the finished silver-patinated bronze Isis
tion “Le Arti di Piranesi. Architetto, incisore, an- tripod in Madrid is a viscerally strange experience.
tiquario, vedutista, designer”, shown originally in It addresses something fundamental about making,
2010 at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini1 and in 2012 at and the complex and messy language of things. My
the Fundación ”la Caixa”, was suggested by Michele only experience of this object, reputedly found in
De Lucchi but inspired by Piranesi’s approach. The Pompeii, is through an image etched by Piranesi.
eight objects made from his designs celebrate the im- This image is the fulcrum with the tripod from an-
portance of treating our cultural heritage as a living tiquity on one side and the contemporary realisation
and dynamic source book. They are not copies of on the other. When making an object from a design
existing artefacts but interpretations of his designs done more than two centuries ago the issues are es-
performed for the first time. These objects, made by sentially the same as if the design was done last week.
Factum Arte, were selected to show the full range There are many levels of mediation and many trans-
of Piranesi’s genius as a designer. The starting point formations that enter the equation; the fact that we
in the selection was De Lucchi’s conviction that are making the object using a range of technologies
Piranesi “should probably have been born 300 years that did not exist in the eighteenth century simply
later”, since “he would make full use of the huge adds a new dimension.
potential offered by modern technology”.2 If Piranesi was standing beside me now, would he
The selection focuses equally on Piranesi’s designs be effusive and “perfettissimo matto in tutto”3 or
and his re-interpretations of the antique. Four ob- would he be shocked by the idea of modelling in a
jects were chosen from Diverse Maniere (Rome, digital space? Would he share my wonder that in its
1769), Piranesi’s catalogue of designs for fireplaces, early gestation (while the endless conversations and
furniture and objects published in three languages transformations were going on) the tripod only exist-
to ensure it reached the widest possible audience; ed as a virtual form in a computer memory displayed
a chair, a coffee pot, a tripod and a chimney-piece ephemerally on a screen? It was not until these digi-
with its fire grate. The other objects are from Vasi, tal data were used to control a laser that gradually
180 181
moved and hardened the form within a tank full of English, Japanese, Spanish, French, Argentine, Stereolithographic prints
of a sphinx/harpy and the
resin that this object assumed anything resembling a Brazilian, Russian and some of less discrete cul- crown from the top of the
physical presence.4 Once it emerged from the tank, tural origins. All share a common interest: to make Isis tripod. Both elements
were modelled in ZBrush
the various parts were then subjected to more physi- things articulate and to enjoy the possibilities that and printed by Materialise
cal transformations for it to become what it is: from emerge when the biography or “social life” of an in Lueven.
resin to silicon encapsulation and into wax; from object is given more weight than conventional as-
wax to plaster encapsulation and into bronze. Once sumptions about authenticity and originality. The
in bronze it starts to assume the physical properties originality of an object belongs in the conversa-
it now has. But more transformations still await it: tions that happen as it is being made, and in the
silver patination and heat, chemical reactions and way these conversations condition the character of
abrasion, dragon’s blood5 and airbrush sprays, com- the finished object. If you can read back and grasp
plex manual activity aided by nineteenth century those conversations, the object becomes articulate.
recipe books. All these mediations produce a surface But before an object speaks to us, we need to ask it
that wants to tarnish to black. How to hold those the right questions.
physical properties in a stable form is another issue, Piranesi was a complex character and his images trig-
another skill and yet more conversations and media- ger thoughts that move through and across time.
tions. The same is true for all the objects we have This is one of his main subjects and the objects he
made, even if the details differ. Some once existed suggested in etched lines on paper have proved re-
as remnants of antiquity, others never existed ex- markably eloquent. He was capricious and celebrat-
cept in Piranesi’s fertile imagination. Our privilege ed the fact. I feel privileged to have spent six months
at Factum Arte has been to spend time thinking in his shadow and to have been able to listen to his
about these things. voice in these prints. I can see some of his limita-
Piranesi was dependent on a group of craftsmen, tions, but I admire the way he fought the revisionist
many with the same skills required today. Factum reading of antiquity and the Renaissance projected
Arte is also dependent on a group of artisans, both by aesthetically motivated scholars in the second
digital and physical, backed up by software writers half of the eighteenth century. I celebrate the ex-
skilled in the arts of visual language, who have nat- traordinary generosity with which he shared his ideas
urally migrated to Spain as a result of the free flow and passions. Hopefully, the objects we have made in
of information that the internet has made possible: Madrid will keep this dialogue alive and active.

182 183
 Isis tripod, silver-patinated bronze and unfettered imagination to defy the “tyranny
with alabaster top of theory”. It was of paramount importance for
From Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti him to give free rein to his inquisitive mind and his
antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista Piranesi fertile imagination, both in responding to antiquity
(Rome, 1778)
Wilton-Ely 929 and in designing new objects.
The “tyranny of theory” refers to a particular con-
Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid
3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer at Materialise, Leuven ception of the Graeco-Roman debate, which used
Patination by Elena Arias and Adam Lowe Platonic ideas to support the supremacy of Greek
Alabaster from Fuentes de Ebro, Zaragoza
sculpture and architecture as the embodiment of
Edition of 12 copies a single, pure, abstracted truth. For Piranesi this
90 cm high (32 cm diameter at top)
2010 reductive approach was anathema, and he vigor-
ously asserted that its over-simplification of the
creative process misrepresented the achievements
Piranesi’s etching is based on a tripod from the of the Romans and, by extension, the creative
first or second century AD. It has been claimed urge itself. Guercino’s famous phrase “Col sporcar
that it was discovered in the Temple of Isis in si trova” can be translated as: “By messing about,
Pompeii in the 1760s. His model, however, was not one discovers”. Messing about suggests excess, or
the tripod itself (now in the Museo Archeologico undirected play; but it is also an acceptance of the
Nazionale in Naples) but rather a drawing from tolerance required for any system to work. Disor-
Vincenzo Brenna’s 1770 survey of Roman relics. der, serendipity and noise are intrinsic to the pro-
Brenna’s conception of antiquity was a theatrical cess of Piranesi’s imaginative interpretation. These
one, and this tripod is a clear example of the Ro- elements are all inherent in physical touch and the
man aesthetic of appropriating influences. Pirane- act of making. By messing, Piranesi did more than
si’s design differs in several subtle but significant assemble ideas: he took ideas, gave them form and
ways from the Classical tripod: his proportions defied the emerging tyranny of the aesthetic theo-
emphasise the vertical, the position of the sphinx/ ry of Greek purity.
harpy is altered, the three legs are not joined by a Piranesi was a Venetian shaped by contemporary
central bar, the pedestal appears to be composed Rome and by his knowledge of the “antique”, which
of two intersecting arcs and the frieze of skulls equally embraced Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek and
and garlands has been “improved”. His approach Roman remains. Many of these remains were being
to antiquity was more imaginative than the foren- discovered in the mid eighteenth century on the
sic recording and restrained (objective) restoration Italian Peninsula. He was fascinated by how the
we aspire to today. In Diverse Maniere6 Piranesi past and the present merge when you engage with
urged the modern designer to emulate what he saw an object. He developed a “connoisseur’s eye” that
as the creative fertility of Roman antiquity by could see beyond surface appearances. He was wide-
freely combining motifs from the past to produce ly respected for his knowledge and understanding
works of striking originality, advocating connois- of the Classical world, but he was also criticised for
seurship and “improvement” over slavish imitation his manic and effusive passions. His influence has
of an original. been enduring and he made a significant contribu-
Detail of the silver
The starting point for interpreting Piranesi’s print tion to the new Enlightenment thinking that was
patinated bronze Isis as a three-dimensional object was to understand his transforming European taste, political opinion and
tripod with a top of
alabaster from Fuentes
approach to design and making. A central theme in perceptions of the Classical world.
de Ebro. his writing is to assert the importance of a speculative
184 185
Dedication The fascination with Egypt and Egyptianising had Antique bronze tripod
The dedication on the print is to “Signor Cavaliere a long history in Rome. Eight Egyptian obelisks from Pompeii, Naples,
Museo Archeologico
Roberto Smyth, a lover of the Fine Arts”. Sir Robert were brought to the city between the first and Nazionale
Smyth (1744-1802) of Berechurch, Essex, went on third centuries AD and five Roman copies were
cat. 247
the Grand Tour with his wife in the 1770s. After made in antiquity. But it is clear that the under- Antique bronze tripod
visiting Milan and Naples they arrived in Rome on standing of hieroglyphs did not travel as freely as kept in Portici at the
Museo Reale, from
25 March 1777, where they met Piranesi. They left the artefacts themselves. Many of the obelisks and Vasi, candelabri, cippi,
Rome in September 1778, shortly before Piranesi’s the Mensa Isiaca (Tabula Bembi, a bronze inlaid sarcofagi, tripodi, 1778

death on the 9th November. Presumably the dedica- tablet made in Rome in the first century AD, now Bronze tripod made in
tion relates to the fact that the Smyths had seen the in the Museo Egizio in Turin) contain nonsensical 2010 by Adam Lowe
and the Factum Arte
tripod exhibited in the Royal Collection at Portici. hieroglyphs and fictional Egyptian rites. Attempts workshop, based on
The collection belonged to the King of the Two Si- to make sense of the hieroglyphs had to wait for the engraving by
Giambattista Piranesi
cilies, Ferdinand IV (1751-1825), who came to power the attention of the great Jesuit thinker Athana-
in 1759 as an eight-year-old boy when his father as- sius Kircher (1602-1680). Kircher published Lingua
cended the Spanish throne as Charles III. He want- Aegyptiaca Restituta in 1643 and four volumes of
ed to retain control over his son for as long as possible translations from hieroglyphs (1650-1654).7 Kircher
and deliberately neglected his education, encourag- was also actively involved in the re-erection of ob-
ing him to live a frivolous life. In 1768 the 17-year- elisks in Roman squares, sometimes adding fantastic
old Ferdinand married Maria Carolina, elder sister “hieroglyphs” of his own design in the blank areas.
of Marie Antoinette, by proxy. Beautiful and smart,
her ambition was to raise the kingdom of Naples to
the position of a great power; she soon came to exer-
cise complete sway over her weak and inept husband.
Her attention was drawn to the archaeological site of
Pompeii by the excavations that had taken place in
the Theatre, the Triangular Forum and the Temple
of Isis between 1764 and 1766. With her support and
encouragement the excavations gained pace.

The Cult of Isis

The Egyptian Goddess Isis is described in the
Amduat as “the one of magic”. With her magic pow-
ers she managed to reunite all the fragments of the
body of her husband Osiris. In the process she used
his dismembered penis to impregnate herself and
conceive Horus. She is often depicted seated with
the infant Horus on her lap. Her “immaculate” con-
ception and the iconographic similarities naturally
led to an association between Isis and Mary, mother
of Christ. The Isis Cult conquered Rome in the first
century AD after decades of rejection and outright
persecution. Her cult became one of the strongest,
surviving until the sixth century.
186 187
cat. 215 Helical tripod, gold-plated bronze aired some remarkably original ideas about the
Miscellaneous examples with alabaster top
of furniture, from Diverse stylisation of natural forms in antiquity.
Maniere d’adornare i From Diverse Maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte It remains uncertain how many of the designs in
cammini, 1769 degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con Diverse Maniere were actually executed. Chimney-
un Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e
Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto pieces were made for the Earl of Exeter (Burghley
(Rome, 1769) House) and John Hope. Various articles of furni-
Wilton-Ely 878
ture were made for Monsignor Rezzonico, including
Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid a pair of side-tables now in the Minneapolis Insti-
3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer at Materialise, Leuven
Cast in bronze by Fademesa, Madrid tute of Fine Arts and the Rijksmuseum, Amster-
Gold plated by J. Muñoz, Madrid dam. Despite the small number of objects that can
Alabaster from Fuentes de Ebro, Zaragoza
Patination by Elena Arias and Adam Lowe be clearly identified as being made directly from
“Piranesi designs”, it is undeniable that this pub-
Edition of 12 copies
90 cm high (46 cm wide at the top) lication exerted a profound influence on the devel-
2010 opment of taste and style in England, France and
Russia at the end of the 1700s which continued to
Diverse Maniere appeared at the end of the 1760s, flourish and mutate during the 1800s.
the most significant and productive decade in This particular tripod, on a page with a number of
Piranesi’s career in terms of theory and practice. It other objects, is dramatically different in spirit from
brings together a clear concept of his radical aesthet- the Isis Tripod illustrated in Vasi, candelabri,
ic and an impressive collection of designs that articu- cippi. The most obvious difference is the presence
late his taste and interests. Chimney-pieces dominate of a self-referential double helix cornucopia that
the first part of the publication, followed by com- occupies the central area between the three legs.
modes, clocks, vases, side-tables, small candelabra, The ancient Egyptians repeated characters and
coffee pots, chairs and a surprisingly large number of added phonetic components to prevent gaps in
doors for sedan chairs and coaches. It is effectively a their hieroglyphic inscriptions. Piranesi shares this
manifesto of his design ideas with the text published tendency, continually adding layers of decoration
in English, French and Italian, making it accessible of diminishing scale, doubtless something he learnt
to an international audience. from his close study of nature and shells, mixed
The volume, with the subtitle Ragionamento with his native Venetian sensibility. Piranesi’s no-
Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, tion of beauty and elegance is found not in reduc-
e Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista tive simplicity but in the mastery of the language
Piranesi Architetto, is much more than a con- of organic decoration and the poetic reverberations
tinuation of Piranesi’s controversial defence of the it stimulates.
Etruscans, although this clearly plays a part in the
spirit of the designs. The work includes a chart Lightness of touch
of Etruscan inventions and two diagrams showing When comparing Piranesi’s designs with the physi-
the influence of shell forms upon their vase de- cal objects that exist, for example the Rezzonico
signs. The main argument calls for a coherent new side-table, it is clear that the expectations he had
system of design, growing from a study of nature about the fineness and complexity of the decoration
combined with all that is excellent in the past, re- have been significantly simplified by the craftsman
gardless of whether it is Greek or Roman, Etrus- who made the objects. Possibly only the English
can or Egyptian. Piranesi’s criteria are essentially carver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), who worked
visual rather than academic and historical and he alongside Christopher Wren, possessed the fineness
188 189
of touch to pull off Piranesi’s intended design while when Giambattista commissioned the architect Gold-plated bronze
tripod based on the
avoiding the Greek prettiness Piranesi argued so Giorgio Massari to finish the project. design in Diverse Maniere
passionately against. The family’s power and cultural influence grew d’Adornare i Cammini,
1769.
While many of Piranesi’s drawings for the construc- when Giambattista Rezzonico’s son Carlo was
tion of Santa Maria del Priorato are sketchy, he elected pope in 1758. As an unworldly man from
worked with the masons and sculptors to ensure the new money, he needed Venetian support that he
sculptural elements they produced had the look and could trust in the complex political environment
feel he wanted. The illustrations in Diverse Maniere of Rome. He appointed his nephews, Giambattista
are designed to be as clear as possible so that they and Abbondio Rezzonico, to positions of influence
could be taken to England, France or elsewhere and through their counsel commissioned Piranesi
and fabricated in his absence. However, they can- to design domestic interiors and furnishings for
not be considered production designs. The drawing Castel Gandolfo, the Quirinale, and the Campidog-
of this tripod conspicuously leaves out one of the lio. With his unlimited ambition, imaginative fertil-
legs so that the complex detail on the central double ity and original ideas about architecture and design,
helix can be clearly seen. The heads of the satyrs the Venetian Piranesi was a natural choice. The
on each leg are cited as an archetype, as is much of appointment gave him the opportunities, financial
the decorative pattern. Piranesi clearly assumed that backing and confidence to develop his architectural
any skilled artisan would possess the knowledge and and design ideas without constraint. In 1764 Pope
ability to improvise around the design in order to Clement XIII gave him his first major commission
produce a harmonious result. Exact details of the as an architect. He prepared magnificent designs
fluted dish set into the top and the fixings for the for the reconstruction of the Basilica San Giovanni
floating barley-twist element in the centre are left in Laterano, one of the most important churches
open-ended. in Christendom, the cathedral of Rome. But his
designs were not accepted and the commission was
Dedication eventually abandoned. Pope Clement XIII later
Piranesi dedicated his book of designs Diverse gave him a knighthood (the Speron d’Oro, 1767)
Maniere d’adornare i cammini to Monsignor which, according to John Wilton-Ely, may have
Giambattista Rezzonico. Giambattista Rezzoni- been to compensate him for his disappointment.
co was Grand Prior of the Order of Malta from His only realised architectural commission was the
1761, and Maggiordomo to his uncle Pope Clement reconstruction of the church of Santa Maria del
XIII from July 1766, with an apartment designed Priorato and the surrounding area on the Aventino
by Piranesi in the Palazzo Quirinale (at that time that served as the home to the Knights of Malta.
the papal residence). This work still stands as a testament to Piranesi’s
The Rezzonico family were rich Venetians who had ideas and his radical approach to design.
bought “patents of nobility” from the Venetian After the death of Pope Clement XIII in 1769,
state in the seventeenth century. Giambattista’s Giambattista Rezzonico acquired the title of Car-
grandfather Giambattista Rezzonico established dinal in September 1770 and went to live with his
the family’s importance in Venice and bought a brother Abbondio in his sumptuous apartment on
magnificent unfinished palazzo on the Grand Ca- the Campidoglio transformed with Piranesi’s help.
nal. His practical and business mind was able to The apartment housed the gilt-framed drawings for
realise one of the great building projects in Venice. the Lateran project that stimulated the imagination
Ca’ Rezzonico was originally designed in 1649 by of Goethe and other visitors.
Baldassarre Longhena, but only completed in 1756
190 191
Detail of the vine that
wraps around the double
helix form in the centre
of the tripod, modelled
in ZBrush

A wire frame drawing of

the complete tripod. The
digital modelling process
produces a wide variety
of images as the process
gains complexity

An assortment of stereo-
lithographically printed
elements compared to
the printed diagrams
that were used during
the assembly of the
final gold-plated bronze
object. Due to the fine
details capable in digital
modelling the leaves
were made individually
and cast in silver

192 193
 A wire frame model of Coffee pot, sterling silver cast
the spout in the form of a
bee. While the aim was to From Diverse Maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte
stay as close to Piranesi’s degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con
designs as possible it was un Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e
occasionally necessary Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto (Rome,
to improve or correct 1769)
some details, in this case Wilton-Ely 878
the angle of Piranesi’s
spout which prevented Digitally modelled using Z Brush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid
the object performing its 3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer at Materialise, Leuven
proper function. Made in cast silver by J. Muñoz, Madrid

Miscellaneous examples Edition of 12 copies

of furniture, from Diverse 25 cm high
Maniere d’adornare i 2010
cammini, 1769, detail of
the coffee pot

The finished coffee

pot cast in silver from Diverse Maniere opens with two pages of drawings
digitally modelled of shells from the Gualtieri Collection intended to
elements.
show how a deep understanding of the growth of nat-
ural form conditioned the Etruscan sense of design.
Piranesi’s ambition was to understand nature in order
to revitalise design, make it relevant and, above all,
demonstrate the deeply interconnected relationship
between the things people live with and their quality
of life. He sought the principles of design that made
natural things beautiful and was dismissive of the il-
lustrative and decorative use of nature as an orna-
ment, a fault he attributed to the Greeks:

The Greeks, by concentrating on ornamentation, on the

subdivision of parts, and on carvings have perhaps been too
successful in achieving a kind of vain prettiness, at the ex-
pense of gravity. It could truthfully be said that no shrub
nor tree exists from which they have not borrowed little
stems or fronds to embellish their architecture; there are
no apples, flowers, or animal figurines that they have not
imported into their friezes; no animal skins or mouldings
or caprices of any kind that have not been carved by them
on pedestals or architraves. But, though all these are tak-
en from nature, and formed as nature makes them, I still
think it necessary to consider whether placing such things
on cornices, friezes, or architraves is any more natural than,
for example (as Horace says), painting a cypress tree in the
midst of the sea when depicting a shipwreck.8

An inspection of the language of design in Piranesi’s

coffee pot reveals a close study of how natural forms
evolve. The depiction of the tortoise is simple and
194 195
stylised and could be open to the same accusations Coffee houses cat. 180
Vases and shells,
of illustration he levelled against the Greeks. The The Turks took Constantinople in 1453 and coffee from Diverse Maniere
movement in the body of the pot from a natural drinking became widespread in the Ottoman d’adornare i cammini,
1769
shell to a stylised ridging is a movement from a direct Empire. In Rome, Pope Clement VIII (1536-
quotation of natural form to a high level of abstrac- 1605) was asked to ban coffee as an infidel threat
tion based on closely observing the way a shell devel- also associated with sodomy, but on tasting it he
ops. The subtle movement from this language into a declared that it was too delicious to be left to the
simplified treatment in the handle almost prefigures unbelievers. All over Europe coffee drinking be-
Art Deco design and the roots of Modernism (with came fashionable, its coffee houses part of the rise
small simplifications the handle could belong to a de- of a new kind of civic sphere nurturing non-con-
sign by Christopher Dresser [1834-1904]). The fact formist behaviour. Venice boasts the longest run-
that it sits comfortably on an object designed before ning coffee house in Italy, Caffè Florian, which
1769 is testament to Piranesi’s taste and skill as a opened in 1720 in Piazza San Marco. In Rome,
designer. When making the coffee pot some liberties Caffè Greco opened in 1760 and now lists Piranesi,
have been taken with the bee in order to produce a Goethe, Stendhal, Byron and Keats among its visi-
working spout and a modification has been made to tors. Caffè degli Inglesi opened a few years later
the lid so that it stays in place when being used. with wall paintings designed by Piranesi, at the foot
of the Spanish Steps in Piazza di Spagna on the
Gualtieri Collection of Shells corner of Via delle Carrozze. By the mid 1760s it
Niccolò Gualtieri (1688-1744), medical doctor, mal- was notorious for its interior decor and frequented
acologist and professor at the University of Pisa, had by many of Piranesi’s circle and clients.
assembled a major shell collection. He devised a sys- Piranesi’s two designs for the Caffè degli Inglesi in
tem of classification that was admired by later zoolo- Diverse Maniere are the only record of the paint-
gists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). ings that remain. They are presented alongside a
Part of his collection still exists in the Museo di Storia series of designs for elaborate Egyptian-style fire-
Naturale e del Territorio in Calci, operated under places. Piranesi’s “new aesthetic” of excessive and
the auspices of the University of Pisa. Gualtieri cross-cultural references was intended as a clear refu-
co-founded the first European botany society, the tation of increasingly dominant but austere theories
Botanical Society of Florence, in 1716. For anyone about Greek purity. He was showing them in the
with a fertile imagination cabinets of curiosities pro- most important meeting place in Rome for inter-
vided an important source of inspiration. The collec- national “grand tourists”. His Egyptian designs ap-
tion of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), described as pear long before Napoleon and Denon’s discoveries
the eighth wonder of the world, established natural in Egypt, which triggered the nineteenth century
history and the stories associated with it as an im- design fantasies of the Egyptian Revival.
portant field of study with its roots in the Classi- This coffee pot, which appears in Diverse Maniere,
cal world. He was described both as the “Bolognese is a coherent example of Piranesi’s aesthetic. Coffee
Aristotle” and the “second Pliny”. For Piranesi the seemed to offer him the perfect vehicle to address
wonders of nature were not enough: they needed to the complicated issue of taste.
be filtered through human perception. If he lived
now he would surely respond to the shrinking divide
between human and non-human and perhaps find
even greater meaning in the inspiration offered by
nature and natural resources.
196 197
Detail of the swan’s neck Grotto Chair, water gilded resin it was decided to leave the chair looking “new” and
arms of the Grotto chair.
Modelled by Juan Carlos From Diverse Maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte
avoid distressing the gold. Most grotto chairs that can
Andrés Arias, cast in a degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con be found now are heavily aged. This is partly due to
synthetic wood resin. un Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e
The finished object was Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto (Rome,
the damp conditions that exist in grottos and partly to
then water-gilded using 1769) the fact that since the Renaissance, the idea of grotto
traditional techniques by Wilton-Ely 878
Eva María Segovia furniture refers back to an illusion of a Golden Age of
Modelled, moulded and casted in synthetic wood epoxi resin by Juan Classical antiquity. Ageing and distressing have an im-
Carlos Andrés Arias, Factum Arte, Madrid
Water gilded by Eva María Segovia, Factum Arte, Madrid
portant role to play in Piranesi’s work but the designs
in Diverse Maniere are his own creations. They are an
Edition of 12 copies
115 x 85 x 80 cm
assertion that he could produce designs that are equal
2011 to the achievements of antiquity; to artificially age the
gold seemed to undermine Piranesi’s achievement.
This elaborate grotto chair is depicted on the same
page of Diverse Maniere as the coffee pot and Originality
the helix tripod. All three objects are examples of Our age is obsessed with originality; the eighteenth
Piranesi’s Venetian Rococo taste in which caprice century had its own particular version of this obses-
collides with imperial splendour. The chair has a sion. Now, as then, the original and the authentic are
scallop back trimmed with small shells. Two swan’s connected in a complex ways. Paradoxically, this ob-
necks emerge from the base of the scallop, twisting session to pinpoint the source of originality increases
in a corkscrewed “line of beauty” as they grasp the proportionally as more and more copies of increas-
hair of two fauns positioned on the front corners of ingly better quality become available and accessible.
the chair. The legs are heavily stylised, articulated at Piranesi was not interested in slavishly recording and
the knee with faces and finished with goat’s hooves. making copies; he wanted to understand artefacts,
Typical of the language of grotto chairs, two stylised reflect upon them, understand them and celebrate
dolphins occupy the space under the seat. The eclec- their relevance. His ambition was to exceed, in terms
tic references merged in this chair are representative of quality, the extraordinary ones that were being
of his celebration of excessive, opulent and extrava- discovered all over the Italian peninsula.
gant elements. Chairs of this type can be found in Piranesi’s clearest and most direct summary of his
natural wood but they are usually gilded in silver approach to architecture and design, Osservazioni
or gold. They first appeared in the late Renaissance sopra la Lettre de M. Mariette, stresses the im-
and became popular again in the 1900s. portance of the creative imagination in conditioning
Unlike the other objects here that were made by both the past and present. He strives to explain what
groups of craftsmen, this chair was completely mod- can happen when we understand how to mediate and
elled by hand by Juan Carlos Andrés Arias, over transform our environment.
the course of many months. The final result, cast in The target of this public letter was Pierre-Jean
a resin used to restore wooden furniture, was gesso Mariette (1697-1774), a collector and dealer of old
coated and water gilded. The chair, made in Ma- master prints from a family of engravers. He had great
drid in the twenty-first century, was clearly con- respect for Piranesi as a connoisseur and printmaker,
ceived in Piranesi’s workshop in Rome. The twist but could not accept his claim that the magnificence
of the swan’s necks, eloquent and gentle from one of Roman Art was derived from its Etruscan roots
angle, aggressive and attacking from another, could rather than its Greek borrowings. Mariette followed
be interpreted as representing competing facets of the “less is more” argument about Greek art. He
Piranesi’s own character. While gilding the object promoted the ideas of German art historian and
198 199
archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717- cat. 215 The finished gilded Grotto
Miscellaneous examples chair based on the design
1768), who argued for the refined simplicity of of furniture, from Diverse by Piranesi
Greek style over the Romans’ excessive decoration Maniere d’adornare i
cammini, 1769, detail of
and decadent corruption of Greek purity, an argu- the chair
ment that has characterised all subsequent accounts
of Classical art and the Renaissance. Piranesi’s writing
style was direct and he relished an open confronta-
tion with Mariette. Both would have been fully aware
of Winckelmann’s assertion, in Gedanken über die
Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in Malerei
und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of
Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, 1755), that
“The one way for us to become great, perhaps inimi-
table, is by imitating the ancients”.
This statement was a provocation to Piranesi. He
steadfastly championed artistic freedom in both art
and architecture:
Let us imagine the impossible: let us imagine that the
world—sickened though it is by everything that does not
change from day to day—were gracefully to accept your
monotony; what would architecture then become? A low
trade, in which one would do nothing but copy.9

Piranesi’s ideas brimmed with imaginative capricci

but they were gradually marginalised as the theories
of Winckelmann and the followers of Greek taste
gained acceptance. Another Venetian, Antonio
Canova, born in 1757, the year before Piranesi’s
son Francesco, found favour and emerged as the
epitome of Neo-Classical style. His delicate render-
ings of flesh in marble were much more in keeping
with the new taste than Piranesi’s extravagances
and cross-cultural references.
Piranesi’s riposte to Mariette at times adopts a proto-
Ruskinian tone about the integrity of manual labour
and hints at the intellectual bankruptcy of a privi-
leged and aesthetic class for whom culture is a taste-
ful endgame of refinement and indulgence. I cannot
help feeling that Piranesi smiled as he conceived this
grotto chair, realising that its decadence, flair and
excess would have seduced Winckelmann’s aesthetic
sensibility. Sadly Winckelmann was murdered a year
before Diverse Maniere was published.
200 201
cat. 183 Chimney-piece made in scagliola with Thassos objecting to capitals carved “in so fantastic a manner
Chimney-piece with a marble top and cast iron fire grate
frieze decorated with with so little of the true forms remaining, that they
three heads joined by From Diverse Maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte serve indifferently for all kinds of things, and are
cornucopias, from Diverse
Maniere d’adornare i
degli edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con with ease converted into candelabra, chimney-pieces,
un Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e
cammini, 1769 Toscana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto and what not. Examples of this kind of trash may be
(Rome, 1769) seen in abundance in the collections of Piranesi”.11
Wilton-Ely 824 and 842
But Horace Walpole, ever the Romantic, enthused:
Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid
3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer by Materialise, Leuven This delicate redundance of ornament growing into our ar-
Cast in a white scagliola with gypsum crystals by Sebastián Beyró and
polished and finished by hand by Sebastián Beyró and Eduardo chitecture might perhaps be checked, if our artists would
Corrales, Factum Arte, Madrid study the sublime dreams of Piranesi, who seems to have
conceived visions of Rome beyond what it boasted even
All the sculptural elements modelled by Lauren Canales, Factum Arte
The bed of the grate was developed by Pedro Miró, Factum Arte, Madrid, in the meridian of its splendour. Savage as Salvator Rosa,
and water-jet cut from a sheet of steel by Arm Waterjet, Guadalajara fierce as Michelangelo, and as exuberant as Rubens, he has
Cast in iron by Fademesa, Madrid imagined scenes that would startle geometry, and exhaust
160 x 214 x 30 cm
the Indies to realise. He piles palaces on bridges, and tem-
2010 ples on palaces, and scales Heaven with mountains of edi-
fices. Yet what taste in his boldness! What grandeur in his
wildness! What labour and thought both in his rashness and
In Diverse Maniere Piranesi gave particular details!12
prominence to chimney-pieces, an interior feature
with no precedent in antiquity. As there was little John Martin (1789-1854), Gustave Doré (1832-1883)
design history to respect and no function to fulfil and the nineteenth century imagination built upon
other than providing a mantelpiece and embellish- Piranesi’s sublime dexterity and freedom. In the
ing a fire opening, the chimney-piece demonstrated twentieth century he was embraced by film-makers
the imaginative application of the past to a strictly and set designers (as well as the architects who built
contemporary requirement. Moreover, as Piranesi the early cinemas). Hollywood plundered the source
astutely observed in the inscription on one of the material he offered and achieved the sense of scale
plates (Wilton-Ely 867), the chimney-piece was a and awe he could only imagine. Piranesi never com-
particularly significant focus for ornamentation in ments directly on Assyrian art, but the designs for
England and the English were an important mar- D. W. Griffith’s film masterpiece Intolerance (1916)
ket for Piranesi. Of the designs featured in Diverse capture the scale and potent virility Piranesi associ-
Maniere, 61 are designs for fireplaces, 11 in a flam- ated with the Classical world. Now, in a digital world
boyant Egyptian style. Emulating what he identi- that dissolves the boundaries between disciplines, his
fied as the Roman approach, he merged Egyptian preoccupations with knowledge, imagination and ap-
and Etruscan elements with Roman antiquity and propriation are more relevant than ever.
the Renaissance. In his virtuoso Rococo designs, In each of the interpretations of the objects, we
the language of the chimney-piece found its first have attempted to follow Piranesi’s lead and main-
great master, but only two of them are known to tain a playful incorporation of references to develop
exist, one for the Earl of Exeter (now in Burghley a new visual language that uses the full technologi-
House) and the other for John Hope.10 cal palette of tools at our disposal. The faces of the
Although he was an astute businessman and a re- angels at the top of the fireplace are based on 3D
spected connoisseur of the Classical world, responses scans of Iberian, Roman and Greek ideals, while the
to his work were sharply divided. The academic two Medusa heads at the bottom are based on 3D
painter James Barry (1741-1806) was a fierce critic, scans of real faces used in their raw form, complete
202 203
with all the “artefacts” of the scanning process. The Detail of a stereo-
lithographic print of the
Cornucopias incorporate a mix of organic computer chimney-piece showing
modelling and 3D scans of actual fruit. The sheep’s a face based on the
greek ideal
heads at each corner were modelled on the basis
of their similarity to the Border Leicester breed The chimney piece has
been made in scagliola
with its characteristic arched nose. The horns of a with a Thassos marble
number of breeds were closely studied and a hybrid top. The fire grate
is made in cast iron
stylised horn was derived to match Piranesi’s print. blackened with oil and
Throughout, the idealised is merged with the real. heat. The bed of the
grate is a waterjet cut
Two cameos in the centre of the fireplace, indicated steel sheet.
in Piranesi’s print by a few sketchy lines, have been
replaced with a 3D scan of a coin minted for Refor-
mation propaganda purposes; this topsy-turvy pope/
devil head makes an oblique reference to the role of
coins in bridging the conceptual gulf between sculp-
ture and printmaking.
Though Piranesi specified the material as white mar-
ble, the complexity of the forms, the undercuts and
the fragile garlands of leaves meant that carving in
marble was impractical if not impossible. We con-
cluded that the best option was to make the man-
telpiece from marble and the chimney-piece from
scagliola, an “imitation” marble that can be cast as
well as carved, and which had been used extensive-
ly in Piranesi’s time (scagliola columns, walls and
objects fill many of the great Neo-Classical houses
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries).
While scagliola looks like marble, its warmth to the
touch reveals that it is a different material.
Piranesi’s print shows this fireplace design set against
a wall covered with a Pompeian-style decoration
similar to, but more cluttered than, the Etruscan
dressing room at Osterley Park built in 1775 to a
design by Robert Adam. As in many of the designs,
the fire is shown without a grate, made directly on
the floor, with a beautifully observed depiction of
smoke staying within the frame of the fireplace. For
practical purposes and to complement the fireplace,
a suitably understated set of fire furniture was se-
lected from the many examples in the Diverse
Maniere (Wilton-Ely 842).

204 205
Detail of the Vase with three griffin heads with a network of talented sculptors including
pomegranate that forms
the handle of the lid of From Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti
Antoine-Guillaume Grandjacquet, Francesco An-
the large vase. This was antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista Piranesi tonio Franzoni and Lorenzo Cardelli, who could
partially modelled in (Rome, 1778)
ZBrush from a scan of the Wilton-Ely 951
realise his sketchy designs in three dimensions and
seeds of a pomegranate help reconstruct antiquities. Many of the sculptors
Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid
Detail of the fluting on 3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer by Materialise, Leuven
working with him were highly skilled in patinating
the neck of the vase Cast in plaster (Alamo 70) by Ángel Jorquera, Javier Barreno and Juan new marble to integrate it with antique material,14
Carlos Andrés Arias, Factum Arte, Madrid
The size of this vase is based on another large marble vase which was necessary to satisfy the aesthetic demands
reproduced in Vasi, candelabri, cippi now in front of the church of of potential clients.
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere (Wilton-Ely 922)
Palazzo Tomati still exists but nothing remains of
220 x 160 x 160 cm any significance in the interiors where Piranesi had
2010
his printing business and “museum”. The visitors
were a roll-call of leading patrons on the Grand
In Rome in the late eighteenth century there was Tour from 1761 onwards, including Sir William
a thriving trade in restoring and selling Classical Hamilton, Sir Roger Newdigate and Charles Town-
antiquities to visiting foreigners. Piranesi was in- ley. On Piranesi’s death a complete room-by-room
creasingly making and selling work from the 1760s inventory of the palace was compiled, but the list is
onwards. When he started losing the patronage of not sufficiently detailed to identify all the restored
the Rezzonico family, especially after the death of antiquities. However, as John Wilton-Ely observes,
Pope Clement XIII in 1769, he was more reliant on “when Gustav III of Sweden made a belated Grand
this work to supplement his business selling prints. Tour in 1783 he visited Palazzo Tomati and pur-
He worked in close collaboration with entrepreneurs chased from Francesco, Piranesi’s son, a large part
such as Thomas Jenkins, James Byers and Gavin of the remaining antiquities, especially those works
Hamilton. Piranesi was recognised and valued by which were too fanciful or bizarre for earlier clients
these British dealers for his expertise, and in 1757 and these are now in Stockholm”.15
he had been made an honorary member of the newly The scale of many of these objects is still surprising: a
formed London Society of Antiquaries. two-metre-high candelabrum, and vases with no func-
The protocols that governed “restoration” were very tion other than to inspire awe. Piranesi embraced the
flexible. Piranesi, deeply engaged in the process of theatricality of the Classical imagination from the
learning from and understanding the antique crea- start of his career. His early work Prima Parte di
tive mind, viewed originality as a process rather than Architetture, e Prospettive, influenced by Bibiena’s
a state of being. The extent to which he was inter- theatrical designs, contains prints depicting small fig-
ested in improving and reconstructing the fragments ures wandering in a stage set where everything is on a
that were being discovered is clearly revealed in Sir vast scale: buildings, fountains, monuments and vases
William Hamilton’s remark about the Warwick vase: dwarf the individual in an awe-inspiring fictional rep-
resentation of the Classical ideal.
I was obliged to cut a block of marble at Carrara to repair
it, which has been hollowed out & the fragments fixed on
it, by which means the vase is as firm & entire as the day it
Mythical creatures
was made.13 Sphinxes, harpies, fauns, griffins and other mythi-
cal creatures abound in Piranesi’s imagination. The
Piranesi’s business was carried out from Palazzo imagery of Classical narrative, filtered through vari-
Tomati in Via Sistina, conveniently near the Brit- ous Renaissance appropriations, gave him a vast re-
ish Quarter of the Piazza di Spagna. He worked serve of raw material. The griffin is reputed to have
206 207
the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a cat. 256 Large vase with three
Antique marble vase as griffons heads cast in
lion. Sometimes it is represented with a long snake seen in England in the plaster from stereo-
for a tail. Usually the female has wings, while the home of Sir Dalton, from lithographically printed
Vasi, candelabri, cippi, and routed elements
males have dragon-like spiked backs. The griffin sarcofagi, tripodi, 1778
was praised for its loyalty and nobility, but equally
famed for its capricious and vengeful nature.

Dedication
Piranesi records this vase with three griffin heads as
being in the Dalton Collection. Nothing is known
about the vase and its whereabouts are not known.
Richard Dalton (1713?-1791) was an artist, antiquar-
ian and dealer who originated from Darlington,
County Durham. He began his career as a painter
but later became a significant antiquarian and deal-
er, partly through his activities as George III’s Li-
brarian and later as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.
He acquired works for the king and also for Lord
Grosvenor and Lord Bute, as well as advising emi-
nent scholars such as Thomas Hollis. He is known to
have built up a personal collection of antiquities, al-
though not much is known about individual works in
the collection. On his death in 1791 these were sold
at Christie’s. Many of them may have been acquired
from Piranesi and at least one other is included in
Vasi, candelabri, cippi (Wilton-Ely 967).
The print is dedicated to Lord Fortrose (1744-1781)
of Seaforth, a member of the Society of Dilettanti.
He made three Grand Tours to Italy in 1752, 1763-
1764 and 1768-1771. As a British aristocrat who spent
a great deal of time in Italy, he was considered “un
gran pezzo” (a big fish) and Piranesi was aware of the
kudos associated with his name. The prints in Vasi,
candelabri, cippi were issued individually over sev-
eral years, partly to advertise his restoration business.
They were only collected together in a two-volume
publication in 1778. Some plates in Vasi, candelabri,
cippi depict objects owned by specific patrons. Pi-
ranesi frequently dedicated prints to other people,
with the financial incentive that multiple copies of
the print could be acquired by owner and dedicatee
as well as their travelling companions and friends.

208 209
 Scagliola tests to make Altar, silver-patinated bronze with with both Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798) and Thomas
the white marble for the
chimney piece and the
porphyric scagliola basin Jenkins (1722-1798) and in 1769 acquired many ancient
porphyry used for the
From Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti fragments found at the Pantanello. These were incorpo-
basin of the altar
antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista Piranesi rated into works he both published as prints and sold as
(Rome, 1778)
Wilton-Ely 916 and 917 objects. Due to the fact that the original fragments of
this altar are in the museum at the Villa Adriana it is
Legs, column and base modelled by Juan Carlos Andrés Arias, Ángel
Jorquera and Tahiche Díaz, Factum Arte, Madrid unlikely that he ever owned these particular pieces but
Cast in bronze by Fademesa, Madrid the “Piranesi Vase” in the British Museum is a good
Various patinas by Elena Arias and Adam Lowe
example of his approach to remaking the antique. His
Porphyric scagliola basin: description of this vase, written either side of the three
Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid
3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer by Materialise, Leuven etchings in Vasi, candelabri, cippi (Wilton-Ely 942,
Cast both in veined black and porphyric scagliola by Sebastián Beyró 943 and 944) give its provenance as the Villa Adriana
and polished and finished by hand by Sebastián Beyró and Silvia
Rosende, Factum Arte, Madrid without mentioning that only two of the bull’s heads
on the base, sections of the lion’s legs and parts of the
Edition of 12 copies
90 x 75 x 55 cm relief depicting satyrs picking grapes are antique. The
2011 rest was created by Piranesi, informed by his knowledge
and understanding but essentially based on his specula-
Piranesi’s altar with two legs is based on fragments of a tion about Roman design based on “reading” the frag-
tripod, now in the museum of the Villa Adriana, found ments that were all around him. He was not dependent
in a pond in the Pantanello of the Villa Adriana in on texts but relied on the objects themselves and sources
Tivoli by Gavin Hamilton. It is believed to have come of information. Through both his meticulous etchings
from the Piazza d’Oro, the most opulent area of the villa. and his physical reconstructions he communicated his
Only fragments of the tripod remain. They have been personal insights into ancient art and architecture.16
reassembled and set into plaster in a twentieth century In his designs for the altar there are significant differenc-
restoration language; a simple central column, a part of es both in detail and in the overall form; most significant-
one foot, sections on the leg and chest and parts of the ly he repositioned the griffons, removing one and placing
basin showing both the details of the wings and the fluted them either side of the central column. When making
pattern are set into the plaster, which roughly creates the altar we stayed as close as possible to his design but
the shape but does not make any attempt to integrate or used different materials for the simple reason that the
enhance the original elements. altar was modelled and cast rather than carved in marble.
Piranesi produced two etchings of the altar in Vasi, The basin was made in scagliola with the appearance of
candelabri, cippi. Both of them present a complete porphyry. The legs, column and base were cast in bronze
and coherent object in perfect condition with a high and patinated in different ways. Both materials are de-
degree of decorative finish. One print, dedicated to pendent on centuries of development by skilled artisans
Thomas Barrett, shows the altar standing on a monu- and both were available in Piranesi’s Rome. Scagliola is a
ment from Palazzo Barberini. The other, dedicated to composite material made from gypsum (plaster of Paris),
Eliza Upton, is more elaborate. The altar is depicted animal glue and pigment. The mix is made into a dough
from slightly above and from an oblique angle standing that can be worked to produce a wide range of veined and
on six heads that emerge from the intricate floral carv- marble-like surfaces. There are reports that scagliola was
ing on a decorated shield, flanked by two bronze lamps used in antiquity but it became fashionable in Italy in
and a smaller carved stone container. The inscription the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth century it
clearly states that the altar is from the Pantanello of was also used extensively by Italian craftsmen to make
the Villa Adriana. Piranesi formed business partnerships the interiors of Neo-Classical buildings all over Europe.
210 211
cat. 237 Silver-patinated bronze
Ancient marble altar altar with scagliola basin
found among the rubble made from both hand
in Villa Adriana, from modelled and digitally
Vasi, candelabri, cippi, modelled elements.
sarcofagi, tripodi, 1778

212 213
 Cast elements of the Plaster candelabrum with evident in the way he responded to the fragments
candelabrum in Factum
Arte’s workshop. The
lion’s and bull’s heads of antiquity he was excavating and reconstructing.
elements were modelled
From Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti He was happy to develop images, like the Vedute
in clay, cast in plaster and
then carved to produce
antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista Piranesi di Roma, that stimulated the Romantic interest in
(Rome, 1778)
the fine detail
Wilton-Ely 912 decay. But his deep respect and interrogation of the
remains of antiquity led to his desire to restore, re
Modelled and cast in plaster (Alamo 70) by Ángel Jorquera, Factum
Arte, Madrid interpret and re present those objects.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, the
220 x 75 x 75 cm
2010 cultural and political map of Europe was very dif-
ferent from today. The ancien régime of empire was
slowly giving way to the emergence of European na-
Towards the close of the essay in Diverse Maniere, tion states. The Italian Peninsula was split between
Piranesi makes a final plea for a new system of design, 11 different kingdoms, duchies, minor republics,
unconstrained by doctrinaire theory, but sanctioned Austrian-controlled areas and, of course, the Pa-
by usage from the past and inspired by nature. pacy. By the 1760s European power bases were be-
ing dramatically renegotiated, fashioning the idea of
Must the genius of our artists be so basely enslaved to the nation as a powerful imagined community. Antiq-
Grecian manners, as not to dare to take what is beautiful
uity was reappraised along similar ideological lines.
elsewhere, if it be not of Grecian origin? But let us shake
off this shameful yoke, and if the Egyptians, and Tuscans Nationalistic preoccupations recreated the Classical
present to us, in their monuments, beauty, grace and el- world in their own image: there were claims that the
egance, let us borrow from their stock, not servilely copy- Etruscans were originally Greek, that Egyptian cul-
ing from others, for this would reduce architecture and the ture was corrupted by Roman influence, and Rome
noble arts to a pitiful mechanism, and would deserve blame was simply a commercial power absorbing immigrant
instead of praise from the public, who seek for novelty, and
influences. Piranesi sidestepped such assumptions.
who would not form the most advantageous idea of an artist,
as was perhaps the opinion some years ago, for a good design, He was more interested in the flow of ideas and less
if it was only the copy of some ancient work. No, an artist, concerned with narrow subjective assertions about
who would do himself honour, and acquire a name, must cultural origins.
not content himself with copying faithfully the ancients,
but studying their works he ought to show himself of an Candelabra: an archetype adopted by Piranesi
inventive, and, I had almost said, of a creating Genius; And
by prudently combining the Grecian, the Tuscan, and the
It is unknown to what extent this candelabrum is
Egyptian together, he ought to open himself a road to the a design by Piranesi or a copy after the antique.
finding out of new ornaments and new manners.17 From similar candelabra, like the one in the col-
lection of King Gustav III of Sweden (Wilton-Ely
The debate that dominated design and architecture 995), the Newdigate Candelabra in the Ashmolean
in Rome in the 1760s is surprisingly like the Mod- Museum in Oxford (Wilton-Ely 910 and 992) or
ernist discourse that dominated the twentieth cen- the marble candelabrum from the Jenkins collec-
tury. Piranesi directly tackled cries of “less is more” tion, now in the Vatican (Wilton-Ely 935), it is
and calls for a reductive simplicity and purity. He safe to assume that significant interventions have
argued for an inspirational response to the accumula- been made to “perfect the object for a connois-
tion of cultural sources, resulting in a dynamic sense seur’s taste”. Piranesi was fascinated by the way
of design to reflect the needs and capabilities of the monumental candelabra could be used as a source
time. For him, culture is not a dead academic subject book for design. He made one for his own funerary
but a living and constantly revitalised force. This is monument, composed of antique fragments mixed
214 215
with modern additions, which is now in the Musée cat. 233 Plaster (Alamo 70) cast
Antique marble of the candelabrum
du Louvre (Wilton-Ely 1002). candelabrum as seen modelled and cast using
In his original designs Piranesi loved to experi- in the collection of traditional methods
the artist, from Vasi,
ment, venturing beyond the bounds of conven- candelabri, cippi,
tional taste, and in his treatment of antique sarcofagi, tripodi, 1778
fragments he was unable to control his desire to
improve and restore. The fireplace gave him a “fa-
cade” to decorate, but the candelabrum gave him
a fully three-dimensional form, essentially offer-
ing four facets with infinite room for variation. He
played with repetitive elements while introducing
novel ways to break the symmetry of the form. On
this complex three-dimensional “canvas” he could
introduce references to poetry and the arts, while
also dealing with the passing of time and the tran-
sitory nature of human life.
While Piranesi was working on the Lateran designs
at the height of his career he would have regu-
larly passed the red granite obelisk of Tuthmosis
III, the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk
in the world, in the Piazza di San Giovanni in
Laterano. The obelisk is reported to have fallen
during an earthquake. It was found in three pieces
in 1587, restored by Pope Sixtus V and erected in
the piazza a year later in place of the equestrian
statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was moved to the
Campidoglio. While simpler in form, this obelisk
(and other obelisks in Rome) may have triggered
Piranesi’s interest in vertical objects decorated with
a complex narrative on each face.

216 217
Conclusion With this love of improvisation and speed, went a complete edifizi desunte dall’architettura Egizia, Etrusca, e Greca con un 13
A. Morrison, The Hamilton and Nelson Papers, 1893-1894, no. 53,
Since his death in 1778, Piranesi has been presented disregard for social convention.20 Ragionamento Apologetico in difesa dell’Architettura Egizia, e Tos- noted by Nancy H. Ramage in “Sir William Hamilton as Collector,
cana, opera del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi Architetto, Rome, Exporter, and Dealer: The Acquisition and Dispersal of His Collec-
as a Romantic figure, an eccentric alone in a strange 1769, and Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed tions”, in American Journal of Archaeology, 94.3 (July 1990), pp.
world, excessive, aloof and with an anti-social tem- In another part of Factum Arte in Madrid, while ornamenti antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista 469-480.
perament. Writing one year after his death Bianconi the objects were being made, Grégoire Dupond was Piranesi, Rome, 1778. 14
While there are now commercial products to age marble, in Factum
7
Athanasius Kircher, Jesuit scholar and the decipherer of hieroglyphs, Arte we prefer the traditional method. Coat the marble in a mixture of
relates the story of his marriage as evidence. “One working to transform the illogical and contradictory argued that Coptic preserved the last development of ancient Egyp- animal faeces (we tend to use goat) and yogurt. Bury it or leave it for a
day while sketching in the Forum, he saw the daugh- spaces of the Carceri into a virtual environment. tian and recognized a relationship between hieratic and hieroglyphic while until the living yogurt has acted upon the surface.
ter of a gardener and immediately asked her to mar- This transformation from one mediated form to an- scripts. His translations were the most complete until Jean-François 15
E-mail correspondence with the author. Gustav III was introduced to
Champollion (1790-1832) published the first translation of the Rosetta Francesco Piranesi by José Nicolás de Azara, a Spanish diplomat (later
ry him. When she consented, he laid down portfolio other, from two to three (or four) dimensions, from Stone in 1822 and demonstrated that hieroglyphs were a combination ambassador in Rome). Azara’s collection of antique sculptures in now
and pencil, and this strange marriage was consum- the virtual to the physical (and vice-versa), has lead of phonetic and ideographic signs. in the Royal Palace at Aranjuez.
mated there and then, under the trees!”18 to a deep practical engagement with Piranesi’s way 8
G. B. Piranesi, Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette, 16
J. A. Pinto, Speaking Ruins. Piranesi, Architects and Antiquity in
Opinions on Architecture, and Preface to a New Treatise on the Eighteenth-Century Rome, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor,
In certain sections of society it may have been unu- of thinking. Piranesi lost the debate with Winck- Introduction and Progress of the Fine Arts in Europe in Ancient 2012.
sual for an ambitious Venetian from a good family elmann and the Greek purists, not because he was Times, introduction by J. Wilton-Ely, translation by C. Beamish and 17
Ragionamento Apologetico, in Diverse Maniere.
living in Rome not to seek to marry for advantage. wrong but because he did not have the academic D. Britt, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2002. 18
G. L. Bianconi, “Elogio storico del cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi
9
Ibid. celebre antiquario, ed incisore di Roma”, in Antologia Romana, 34-36
Bianconi’s story certainly suggests a passionate char- backup. He was too busy “making” while they had 10
There is a chimney-piece from Stowe House, now in the Santander (1779).
acter and fits the Romantic stereotype of an impul- all the time in the world to think and hone their headquarters of Banco Santander, that has been suggested as a Piranesi 19
A. Huxley, Prisons. With the ‘Carceri’ Etchings by G. B. Piranesi.
sive artist. But to think of him as an anachronistic aesthetic refinement surrounded by luxury. Manual design incorporating elements from antiquity. Critical Study by Jean Adhémar, translation by C. F. Mac Intyre,
11
From a letter by Barry to Edmund Burke, written 22 May 1768 in D. Sutton and S. Fawcus, Trianon Press, London and Zeitlin and Ver
figure who found himself in the wrong place at the skills tend to be valued less than intellectual or po- Rome, collected in E. Fryer, The Works of James Barry, pp. 123-134. Brugge, Los Angeles, c. 1949.
wrong time undermines his whole message. He was litical ones. It is rare that someone comes as close to 12
Writing about the designs of Robert Adam in his Anecdotes on 20
Jean Adhémar in A. Huxley, Prisons. With the ‘Carceri’..., op. cit.
anachronic in a positive sense and celebrated the bridging the divide as Piranesi did at a time when Painting (1780 edition).
temporal collisions that are both inherent in and intellectual thought and applied craft were being
triggered by man-made objects. Piranesi had a great pushed further apart than ever before. A compari-
deal to say about many subjects. In both writing and son between the portrait of Winckelmann in luxu-
drawing he articulated his thoughts with great pas- rious undress by Anton von Maron (1768) and the
sion and timeless clarity. Writing in 1949 about the etching of Piranesi as an antique sculpture by Felice
Carceri etchings, Aldous Huxley observes: Polanzani (1750) expresses their different positions
better than words.
These extraordinary etchings have continued, through two
centuries, to seem completely relevant and not modern
merely in their formal aspects, but also as expressions of 1
“Le Arti di Piranesi. Architetto, incisore, antiquario, vedutista, de-
obscure psychological truths. To use a once popular reli- signer”, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 28th
gious phrase, they spoke to the condition of Coleridge and August 2010 to 21st November 2010 (touring in 2012 and 2013). Con-
De Quincey at the height of the Romantic reaction; and ceived by Michele De Lucchi and organised by the Fondazione Giorgio
they speak no less eloquently to the condition of twenti- Cini and Factum Arte.
eth century men and women brought up on the literature, 2
M. De Lucchi, “Giambattista Piranesi’s Trades”, pp. 25-27 in this
imaginative or descriptive, of deep psychology. That which volume.
3
“A perfect madman in everything”, quoted from a letter by the ar-
Piranesi represents is not subject to historical change.19
chitect Carlo Vanvitelli (1739-1821), cited in B. Sørensen, “Two Over-
looked Drawings by Piranesi for S. Giovanni in Laterano in Rome”, in
Piranesi began the Carceri d’invenzione in 1745 The Burlington Magazine, CXLIII (2001), pp. 430-433.
4
In stereo-lithographic printing, the digital file divides the shape into
when he was 25 years old. The etchings were pro- very thin slices; a laser then draws the outline of a “slice” on a thin layer
duced before 1750. If you spend some time looking of light-cured liquid polymer; the polymer hardens where it is hit by
at either the first edition or the re-worked one pub- the laser; then a new thin layer of polymer washes over the surface, the
laser outlines the next slice, and so on.
lished by Piranesi in 1761, the speed of the drawing 5
A red resin that bleeds from a tree found on the Canary Islands.
and the notational freedom is breathtaking. 6
Diverse maniere d’adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli
218 219