PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista
(b. 1720, Mestre, d. 1778, Roma)

Frontispiece

1756
Etching, 400 x 600 mm
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

The picture shows the second frontispiece of Vol. III of Le Antichità Romane, published in four volumes in 1756 in Rome. Piranesi was much less interested in objectively reproducing Roman ruins than in suggestively depicting them in exaggerated form in picturesque circumstances.