Artsmart Roundtable: Piranesi's Views of Rome

Art Smart
grand tour preudhomme
Grand Tourists painted by Jean Preudhomme in 1774.

Round the World travelers may act like they've stumbled on an original idea, but (and I hate to break it to them) what they're doing is sooo 18th century. Back in the day, British aristocrats set out on a tour of the sights of Europe and became part of the time honored tradition, the Grand Tour. What did tourists want to take home with them? Souvenirs and pictures of their travels, obviously. In Rome, these pictures were called vedute and the godfather of the vedute was Piranesi.

piranesi portrait
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a prolific printmaker, born in Venice but then travelled to Rome to make prints of the city during the eighteenth century.  His most famous series, Vedute di Roma (translated as Views of Rome,) consisted of 135 etchings and was first printed in 1751. The etchings are quite large (40 x 60 cm) and feature various sights in Rome, including multiple etchings of the Colosseum, Pantheon, and St. Peter’s. Most importantly, they provided tourists with new views of the city that they could take home with them after their travels.

Long before a world of Photoshop and Instagram, Piranesi was amping up his views of Rome, often showing a view of Rome that did not actually exist. Exaggerating angles and size, he often made his subject matter appear larger than life. He also used a stage design technique, showing his subjects from multiple angles, that gives the feeling of actually standing in front of the work of architecture.

In 1976, artist Herschel Levit attempted to recreate Piranesi’s most famous views with photography in his book Views of Rome, Then and Now. Well 1976 isn’t quite now anymore and I thought it might be an interesting exercise to revisit the idea and compare some of Piranesi’s views with their modern-day counterpart, the Google street view.

View of the Atrium of the Portico of Octavia
piranesi vedute octavia
screenshot octavia
View of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius

piranesi vedute pyramid

pyramid rome screenshot

Flavian Ampitheater, Called the Colosseum, in Rome

piranesi vedute colosseum

screenshot colosseum rome

The Column of Trajan
piranesi vedute trajan's column

trajan's column screenshot

View of the Capitol from the Side

piranesi vedute campidoglio

screenshot campidoglio rome

View of the Great Square and Basilica of St. Peter

piranesi vedute st peter's

st. peter's rome screenshot

As you can see, it's not always easy to recreate the grandeur of Piranesi's Rome (especially with street signs in the way.) What I find fascinating, however, is that even hundreds of years later, the vistas, for the most part, are still intact. If you'd like to try your hand at recreating Piranesi's subjects for yourself, check out the map below.

View Rome, Then and Now in a larger map

further reading and exploration

Piranesi's prints are a staple to most major art museum collections. While not always on display, keep an eye out for them in print and drawing exhibitions throughout the world.

Ficacci, Luigi. Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, New York: Taschen, 2000. (Find at your on Amazon.)

Levit, Herschel. Views of Rome Then and Now, New York: Dover Publications, 1976. (Find at your local library or on Amazon.)

Art Smart
Art Smart is a virtual roundtable discussion with other bloggers who love exactly what I do, art and travel. This month's topic is works on paper. To learn more about this art form, check out this post:

A Sense of Place: Medieval Bestiaries as Symbols

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Comments

ehalvey's picture ehalvey replied on

I absolutely love how you compared the Piranesi print with the Google street view! So clever.

We've got a side view of the Pantheon and the piazza in front of it. Piranesi made it seem much larger than it is in that particular view, which I guess was like the HDR or Instagram filters making photos look better than in real life.