Giovanni Battista PiranesiGiovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi was a Baroque artist who was born in the Republic of Venice in an Northern Italian town named Mogliano Veneto, located near Treviso. He studied architecture under his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, who was a Venetian engineer who specialized in excavation, a Magistrato delle Acque (Magistrate of Waters). In 1747 he settled in Rome, where he opened a workshop in Via del Corso and began work on the series of pictures of the city that first made him famous. He published these vedute (views) of Rome from 1748-1774. At the same time, he began measuring the still-standing ancient buildings, collecting this research into Antichità Romane de' tempo della prima Repubblica e dei primi imperatori (“Roman Antiquities of the Time of the First Republic and the First Emperors”). In 1761 he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca and opened a printing facility of his own. In 1764 Piranesi began the restoration of the church of Santa Maria del Priorato in the Villa of the Knights of Malta in Rome, becoming a knight of the Papal States in 1767, and in 1776 he created the famous Piranesi Vase, a “restoration” of ancient sculpture. In 1777-78 Piranesi published Avanzi degli Edifici di Pesto, (“Remains of the Edifices of Paestum”) a collection of views of Paestum. He died in 1778, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria del Priorato.   |
Artist on view in the Permanent Collection Gallery
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