Rather, what follows highlights three aspects of eclecticism in his work-presented in loose chronological order-that seem to have had the most bearing on the conceptualization of stylistic heterogeneity in the architecture of the nineteenth century. This particular consideration of Piranesi’s influence is not an exhaustive geography of the haunted wanderings of the artist’s aesthetic ghost. By casting a new light on the past, he joined Laugier and Winckelmann’s discussion about classic architecture, producing a decisive contribution in the diffusion and appreciation of Roman ancestral beauties throughout Italy and Europe. In view of these elements, Piranesi’s theories about conservation represent a turning point in the late Baroque re-evaluation and re-interpretation of the antiquity. Such discoveries, and Piranesi’s oeuvre, reinforced a long-existing awareness of Roman ruins as a window on the past glory of European history, and a metaphor for the transience of human achievement. This invite to conservation came in conjunctions with the outstanding archaeological discoveries in Herculaneum (commencing in 1735) and Pompei (commencing in 1748). In the introduction to his famous Delle antichità romane de’ tempo della prima Repubblica e dei primi imperatori romani, the Venetian artist focused his attention on the disrepair and the alterations of the Roman archaeological ruins, highlighting the importance of protecting the old monuments and reproducing them with prints and engravings. Piranesi not only recreated with his art the ancestral splendor of the old Roman ruins, but was also concerned with their conservation and restoration. Among the numerous artists working in Rome, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) fostered an innovative and lasting perception of antiquity, combining remarkable flights of imagination with a scientific and practical understanding of ancient Roman technology. This enormous appreciation had its epicentre in Rome where the local art marked, influenced by the collecting interests associated with the Grand Tour, polarized its activity on the rediscovery of the Eternal City’s old ruins which were not seen any more as ordinary/quaint elements of the landscape but instead as specific and autonomous entities characterized by a powerful, evocative potential. Therefore, restoring Piranesi, his arguments, executed works and drawings to architectural history appear as a necessity.ĭuring the seventeenth century the fascination of ruins had an irresistible impact throughout Europe thanks to the Grand Tour, the new archaeological discoveries and the tireless work of painters and engravers who, with their art, reproduced the beauty of the ancient world. However, most of these evaluations lack a stable historical base. Piranesi’s perception caused him to be described as madman or idiosyncratic. Thus Piranesi placed Romans in another aesthetical category which the eighteenth century called ‘the sublime’. Secondly, he distinguished Roman from Grecian architecture identified with ‘ingenious beauty’. Concerning origins, he developed a history of architecture not based on the East/West division, and supported this by the argument that Roman architecture depended on Etruscans which was rooted in Egypt. Piranesi, however, conceived of these two debates as one interrelated topic. He has thus been excluded from the ‘story’ of the progress of western architectural history. Both of these served the identification of Piranesi as ‘unclassifiable’. The former interpretation derived from Piranesi’s position on aesthetics, the latter from his argument concerning origins. The second is the mode of codification of architectural history. The vectors of approach yielding misinterpretation of Piranesi derived from two phenomena: one is the early nineteenth-century Romanticist reception of Piranesi’s character and work. But Piranesi was misinterpreted both in his day and posthumously. He is numbered foremost among the founders of modern archaeology. He posited crucial theses in the debates on the ‘origins of architecture’ and ‘aesthetics’. In the architectural, historical, and archaeological context of the eighteenth century, Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) played an important role.
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