Giovanni Battista Piranesi | Della magnificenza ed architettura de’ Romani, 1761-1765

Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Della magnificenza ed archittetura de' Romani. Rome: 1761 [bound with:]

Osservazioni... sopra la lettre di M. Mariette. Rome: 1765

FIRST EDITIONS, 2 works in one volume, large folio (529 x 400 mm), (i) 2 engraved titles (Latin and Italian), portrait of Clement XIII, 3 initials, 2 tailpieces, and 38 plates (some folding or double-page), Latin and Italian text; (ii) engraved title, 3 headpieces, 3 tailpieces, and 9 plates (some double-page), nineteenth-century half calf over marbled boards, spine lettered in gilt, text leaves of first work with marginal dampstaining and very minor marginal worming (not affecting text), final plate of second work repaired at outer margin (not affecting illustration), extremities rubbed

FIRST EDITIONS of two polemical works by Piranesi, WITH EXCEPTIONAL PROVENANCE. This volume once belonged to Thomas Giffard (1764-1823), the scion of one of the oldest Catholic families in Europe, whose family seat at Chillington, Staffordshire, has been held since 1178. During the late-eighteenth-century, they enjoyed a significant increase in wealth and social status. Starting in 1783, Thomas undertook the Grand Tour in the company of his tutor, with his itinerary encompassing France, Germany, and Italy, Spa, Dusseldorf, Munich, and Rome (which he arrived in in the Spring of 1784). Thomas would have acquired the present volume as a souvenir of his journey of cultural edification, alongside the other Piranesi works in the present sale (lots 82, 83, and 84).

The present works rebut the theories of three scholars Allan Ramsay, Julien-David Le Roy, and Johann Winckelmmann, all of whom supported the superiority of Gothic architecture over Roman architecture. Piranesi became a fierce defender of Roman architecture and art, which he believed to be indebted to Egyptian and Etruscan influences, and here he proposed a cultural path free from Greek influence.

The Osservazioni was intended to be bound as a supplement to Della magnificenza, though it is not present in all copies.

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Giffard (1764-1823), of Chillington Hall, Staffordshire; thence by descent

LITERATURE:

(i) BAL RIBA 2552; Cicognara 3833; Focillon 927-966; Hind, Piranesi, p. 84; (ii) BAL RIBA 2563; Cicognara 3836; Focillon 967-982; Hind, Piranesi, p. 86