January 20-April 21

The Palazzo Barberini,
from the Vedute di Roma, 1749

The Household Accounts(L’Œconome), 1754

View of the Temple of the Sibyl in Tivoli,
from the Vedute of Rome, 1761

View and Plan of the Vauxhall at
the Foire Saint-Germain, 1772

Sculpture: Workshop for Plaster Casting,
Tools and Methods, 1751-1772

Sculpture: Various Procedures
for Working on Marble and Tools, 1751-1772

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, Italian, 1720 – 1778
The Palazzo Barberini, from the Vedute di Roma
etching, 1749
Ackland Fund, 61.3.4 

The Vedute di Roma consists of 135 prints that Piranesi produced over several decades beginning in the late 1740s.  In the series, he documents the landscape of Rome, particularly the ruinous reminders of classical antiquity. 

In this print, Piranesi incorporates a topographical legend into the lower margin.  Textual entries, numbered one through six horizontally across the bottom of the print, correspond to numbers appropriately situated within the image. 

The mixture of text and image in this work encourages interaction from the viewer, prompting a matching game with the numbers in the legend and those in the picture.  Furthermore, Piranesi’s use of text produces documentation of the landscape around the Barberini palace, thus situating it within a geographical and historical context.