Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta del Porto di Ripa Grande (View of the Port of Ripa Grande), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

This most Venetian-looking of Piranesi’s vedute (views) shows the Ripa Grande, the port area that serviced shipping to Rome from the Mediterranean. Piranesi altered this print over time; in the first edition, a large barge, subsequently removed, occupied the centre of what is now a clear path of water. The Ripa Grande was demolished at the end of the 19th century as new embankments were built to contain and control the river Tiber.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta interna del Panteon (View inside the Pantheon), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

With its dramatic central source of light, known as an oculus, the Pantheon has the widest solid-construction dome in existence and is the best preserved of all classical Roman buildings. Originally a Roman temple, the Pantheon was consecrated as a church in 609. In the 17th century, Pope Urban VIII was satirised for ordering the removal of its original bronze features to create the baldacchino (the canopy over the high altar) in St Peter’s.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Villa dell’E[ccelentissi]mo Sig[no]r Card[inale] Alessandro Albani (View of the Cardinal Albani’s Villa), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

When Piranesi etched this view in the 1760s, major extensions to an earlier building had just been completed. Carlo Marchionni’s design enabled Cardinal Alessandro Albani to display his extensive collection of classical sculptures, largely in the loggia (gallery) on the ground floor, overlooking the garden. The formal gardens reflected an understanding of the garden as both a contemplative aesthetic space and a place for socialising.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Piazza Navona (View of the Piazza Navona), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

As is still clear today from its elliptical shape, the Piazza Navona was the site of a chariot racecourse during Domitian’s reign (81–96 AD). In the baroque era, it was regularly sealed off and flooded as part of summer festivities celebrating the Pamphili family, whose palace overlooked the piazza; Pope Innocent X (1644–55) was a Pamphili. Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers (1651) heightened the effect of the piazza as a grand outdoor drawing room to the palace.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Basilica, e Piazza de S Pietro (View of the Basilica and Piazza of St Peter), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Replacing an earlier basilica, the present St Peter’s involves more than a century of design and construction, between 1506 and 1667, including Michelangelo’s dome and Bernini’s dramatically shaped piazza, which remained unpaved until 1817. Piranesi’s view is populated by an extraordinarily eclectic crowd, from the local poor to aristocrats and uniformed servants to the humbler kinds of pilgrim.

Robert Adam (author & artist) and Francesco Bartalozzi (engraver), Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (London, printed for the author), 1764, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Split (then Spalatro), in Croatia, was the site of a palace built by Emperor Diocletian (244–311 AD). Scottish architect Robert Adam surveyed it as part of his own Grand Tour in the 1750s, when he met Piranesi in Rome. To underline how remote this site was for most travellers of his day, Adam, seen here sketching ruins, has included a sphinx and exotically dressed local people.

James Stuart and Nicholas Revett (authors & artists) and Daniel Lerpiniere (engraver), Monument of Philopappus, 1792, from Antiquities of Athens, vol 3 (London, printed by John Haberkorn), 1762–94, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

James Stuart and Nicholas Revett visited Greece as part of the Grand Tour between 1751 and 1754. Their subsequent publications on Athenian architecture were notable for their precision and detail. In this view, a tour guide is visible (right foreground) making coffee for (presumably) Stuart and Revett, seen drawing in front of the early-2nd-century monument.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Dogana di Terra a Piazza di Pietra (View of the Customs House), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria. 

The building that housed baroque Rome’s customs house incorporated the remains of a temple to Hadrian (dating from 145 AD) in a new building by Carlo Fontana, commissioned in 1695. The dogana was a mandatory stop for Grand Tourists, who often complained of over-zealous searches by officials that only ended when bribes were offered – a likely fate for the visitor with his baggage in the right foreground.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Piazza del Popolo (View of the Square of the People), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

The Piazza del Popolo was the northern entrance to Rome, and its two mirror churches, completed in the 1670s, were part of Grand Tourists’ first view of the city. In 1770 Charles Burney described it as ‘this grand and noble spectacle – with an obelisk in the middle with 2 beautiful churches and 3 handsome streets in front...’ The piazza was also a commercial hub for inland trade.

Johann George Wille (engraver) and Louis Tocqué (after), Abel Francois Poisson, Marquis de Marigny, 1761, engraving, private collection.

Abel Poisson was the brother of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of French monarch Louis XV. Poisson first saw Piranesi’s works when he visited Italy on the Grand Tour in 1750, and he became an enthusiastic and lifelong collector. He engaged in a lively correspondence with Piranesi in 1762, while ordering his latest publications. Sometimes Poisson's intermediary was French artist Hubert Robert, then a scholarship-holder at the French Academy in Rome.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Avanzi d’un portico coperto, o criptoportico in una Villa di Domiziano (Ruins of a Covered Portico in a Villa of Domitian), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

This imposing villa was built between 134 and 150 AD for a senatorial family, and not, as Piranesi’s contemporaries believed, for the emperor Domitian. However, identification with one of the most ruthless Roman rulers invited Piranesi to treat the ruin as a symbol of the illusory nature of grand ambitions. Gesturing towards the fragile remains, the figure on the right is like a human question mark, asking: what price glory?

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Altra Veduta del tempio della Sibilla in Tivoli (Another View of the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Piranesi’s habit of exaggerating the scale of classical buildings is typified by all three views he made of this essentially modest temple from the 1st century BC, with an entrance just 5 metres high. The temple rests on a podium measuring little more than 2 metres, above two rows of concrete vaulted rooms. This view shows the temple’s best-preserved side, where ten of 18 original columns remain.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Dimostrazioni dell’Emissario di lago Albano (The Outlet of Lake Albano), from Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi, vol. 11 (Paris, Francesco and Pietro Piranesi), 1800–07, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne.

This is one of five large plates by Piranesi originally printed in a 1762 publication funded by Pope Clement XIII. It illustrates a major hydraulics system dating from about 390 BC in the Alban Hills near the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo. Perhaps intended for irrigation or swamp drainage, the system included a tunnel almost 1500 metres long, a major feat of Roman engineering.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Ichnographiam Campi Martii Antiquae Urbis, from Campius Martius Antiquae Urbis (Rome, Giovanni Battista Piranesi), 1762, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

This extraordinary map accompanied Piranesi’s book on the Campus Martius, published in 1762 and the result of almost a decade’s work. The map not only reveals Piranesi’s capacity to combine historical research with imaginative reconstruction, but also his Grand Tourist and professional connections. In the frame around the title, Piranesi is depicted with Scottish architect Robert Adam in a medallion, in which they appear like joint rulers on an ancient coin.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta dell’Anfiteatro Flavio, detto il Colosseo (View of the Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheatre), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

First dedicated by the emperor Vespasian (9–79 AD) and completed under Titus in 80 AD, the Colosseum was last used as a public amphitheatre under Theodoric (d 526). Despite lightning strikes, earthquakes, occupation as a fortress and frequent medieval attempts to remove the iron clamps that secured its masonry, the Colosseum has remained an eloquent symbol of Roman grandeur and ruthlessness.

Antoine Desgodetz (author & artist) and Nicolas Guérard (engraver), Du Temple de Vesta a Tivoli, from Les Édifices Antiques de Rome desinés et mesurés tres exactement (Paris, Chez Iean Baptiste Coignard), 1682, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Desgodetz created the first anthology of measured architectural drawings of classical Roman buildings, here open at a plate showing the Temple of the Sibyl, at Tivoli. Desgodetz’s work was an important model for similar plates in Piranesi’s four-volume Antichità Romane of 1756, even though Piranesi claimed there was no existing precedent. Though criticised for inaccuracies, Desgodetz’s book circulated widely throughout the 18th century.

Girolamo Rossi (engraver) after Antonio Buonamici (artist), Il colombario dei liberti di Livia (The Tomb of Livia’s Servants), from Francesco Bianchini, Camere ed Inscrizioni Sepulcrali (Rome, GM Salvioni), 1727, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Francesco Bianchini’s book was an important model for Piranesi’s later studies of tombs and funeral monuments. It documented a richly decorated underground tomb discovered in 1725–26 in a vineyard outside Rome. In this illustration, a scholar precariously perched on a ladder examines inscriptions, while a workman excavates below him. Piranesi purchased the copper plates for this book’s illustrations and reprinted them in his Antichità Romane of 1756.

Hubert Robert, La Statue en avant des Ruines (The statue in front of the ruins), etching, from Les Soirées de Rome (Nights in Rome) (Paris, Wille), 1764, pl 3, private collection.

Hubert Robert was one of several scholarship-holders at the French Academy in Rome who had direct dealings with Piranesi, accompanying him on sketching trips. Ruins became a major theme in Robert’s mature paintings. In his series Les Soirées de Rome, he transformed Piranesian themes through a characteristically French lightness of touch and delicacy, as well as employing a tiny scale, the exact opposite of Piranesi’s.

George Cuitt (Jnr), The Refectory, Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, etching, from Wanderings and Pencillings Amongst the Ruins of the Olden Time (London, Nattali and Bond), 1855, pl 28, private collection.

In several of Cuitt’s etchings of the ruins of British abbeys, the way in which luxuriant vegetation almost overwhelms the ruins recalls Piranesi’s late views of sites at Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli. The massive fragments of capitals in the foreground of this scene also recall similar devices in Piranesi’s vedute, where they were sometimes introduced for artistic effect.

George Cuitt (Jnr), St Mary's, York, etching, from Wanderings and Pencillings Amongst the Ruins of the Olden Time (London, Nattali and Bond), 1855, pl18, private collection.

George Cuitt’s father, who had worked as a landscape artist in Italy between 1769 and 1775, introduced him to Piranesi’s works at an early age. St Mary’s, York directly references Piranesi’s Tempio antico volgarmente detto della Salute. Cuitt does not merely imitate Piranesi’s style; he translates it into his own language, adapting it to ruins of a quite different period lit by a much colder northern light.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta interna della Basilica di S Pietro in Vaticano (Internal view of St Peter’s), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne.

Throughout the 1750s, Piranesi’s Vedute were published by Bouchard and Gravier, French booksellers in Rome, whose name and address appears below the images. Their business included a printing workshop with its own presses, and they also published the first edition of the Carceri. Many sets of Vedute published by them are lighter by comparison with the editions Piranesi printed in his own workshop after 1761, using heavier presses.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Spaccato interno della basilica di S Paolo fuori delle Mura (Interior View of St Paul Outside-the-Walls), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

The difference between the effects of light in this church interior and those Piranesi used in much later works is striking. The increasingly dramatic effects he sought may have been beyond the capacity of Bouchard and Gravier’s presses, or the comprehension of their staff. Desire for complete control over printing was an important element in Piranesi’s break with the firm and the establishment of his own printing workshop in 1761.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Prisoners on a Platform, from Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons) (Rome, Bouchard and Gravier), c 1750, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Piranesi employed spontaneous etched lines with extraordinary confidence in the first edition of his imaginary prison images, published between about 1749 and 1760. Their symbolism remains mysterious: are they inspired by the Roman past, intense personal angst, or contemporary political and social conditions? They clearly meant a great deal to Piranesi. He reworked the plates, publishing a typically intense, much darker second edition in 1761.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Arco di Trajano in Ancona (Arch of Trajan at Ancona), etching, from Antichità Romane de’tempi della Repubblica (Rome, Giovanni Battista Piranesi), 1748, Rare Books collection, State Library of Victoria.

Compared with Piranesi’s later works, the images in this 1748 publication have much of the lightness and airiness of contemporary Venetian printmaking. However, he was already creating a distinctive style, and he subsequently reprinted this folio several times. This arch, dating from c 114 AD, was designed as a landmark to ships approaching Ancona, the largest port on the Adriatic Sea in the imperial era.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta dell'Esterno della Gran Basilica di S Pietro (View of the Exterior of the Great Basilica of St Peter), 1765–78 impression, etching and engraving, from Vedute di Roma, 1748–78, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne.

Like many other early prints in the series Vedute di Roma, this is a panoramic streetscape. By including the washing line attached to the mosaic workshop (left foreground), Piranesi mingles the intimate with the grand. Piranesi had largely abandoned the panoramic approach by the early 1760s; the later images created in his most mature period generally isolate an individual building or structure, emphasising its grandeur.

Francesco Piranesi (engraver) after Giuseppe Cades (artist), Portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1784 engraving, from Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Paris, Francesco Piranesi), 1800–07, vol 1, Special Collections, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne.

One of three posthumous depictions of Piranesi, this profile in the style of a classical medallion was created by his eldest son, Francesco, as the frontispiece for the 1784 reprint of his father’s Antichità Romane. It copies a work by Giuseppe Cades, probably commissioned by the family. The two other contemporary portraits of Piranesi made just after his death similarly show him as though he were a classical Roman.