![]() ![]() We were thus able to see him emerging out of his Venetian and Roman background. Some of his earliest drawings, done in his native Venice, were shown in the company of works by Canaletto, Tiepolo, and Francesco Guardi and designs for theatrical scenery by Filippo Juvarra and Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena. Here an attempt was made to set Piranesi in the context of his time. The one organized by John Wilton-Ely for the British Arts Council and shown at the Hayward Gallery in London was the most ambitious. He must now be among the most written-about of all eighteenth-century artists, Watteau, Boucher, Tiepolo, and such architects as Juvarra and Vanvitelli lagging far behind.ĭespite fierce competition for loans, four exhibitions were held to mark the two hundredth anniversary of Piranesi’s death (November 9, 1778). And it partly accounts for the flood of art historical writing devoted to him in the past thirty years. ![]() This may indicate something of his essential quality. To describe his fantasies became an exercise in literary skill, one undertaken by Horace Walpole, Thomas De Quincey, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset (who cheated by translating De Quincey), Théophile Gautier, Herman Melville, and in our own time Aldous Huxley, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. He has, however, held a peculiar fascination for writers ever since the eighteenth century. And although he styled himself an architect, his “practice” was limited to refurbishing a single, quite small building, Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome, which cannot be described as a masterpiece. As an archaeologist he was more imaginative than scientific. His works of architectural theory were too confused and eccentric to have ever had much influence. The vast majority of his etchings, and those on which his fame in his own day was founded, are of Roman Imperial architecture which does not at present arouse much admiration from either scholars or the general public. He was a masterly draftsman and etcher but hardly to be compared artistically-though some enthusiasts do compare him-with Tiepolo and Canaletto, let alone Rembrandt and Goya. His current popularity is, nonetheless, difficult to explain. Specialist students all over the world seem to have taken the opportunity to expound their diverse theories, and to promise such further productions as complete catalogues raisonnés of his prints and drawings. His drawings and etchings have returned to their solander boxes in the print rooms of Europe and America, his great bound folios have been put back in place and-presumably-additional shelving has been set up to support the weight of the avalanche of recent publications devoted to him. ![]()
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