Piranesi, Giovanni Battista

About the artist

Name

Biography

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian draftsman, printmaker, architect and art theorist. His large prints depicting the buildings of classical and postclassical Rome and its vicinity contributed considerably to Rome’s fame and to the growth of classical archaeology and to the Neoclassical movement in art.

He created about 2,000 plates in his lifetime. Among his most notable mature prints are the series Le antichità romane (“Roman Antiquities” 1756), of which the Central Library holds a copy. He is renowned for the accuracy of architectural depictions and his personal expression of the structures’ dramatic and romantic grandeur.

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