Piranesi and Francesco Bianchini: Capricci in the service of pre-scientific archaeology

Art History

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 184-213

  Dixon, Susan M ^a  

^a MARIST COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARCHEOLOGY; ART; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; EDUCATION; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; ITALY; PHILOSOPHY; PRINTING; REVIEW;

ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL; ARCHAEOLOGY; ART; EMPIRICAL RESEARCH; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, ANCIENT; ITALY; PHILOSOPHY; PRINTING;

EID: 61249541602     PISSN: 01416790     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8365.00149     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. John Wilton-Ely, 'Piranesi and the role of archaeological illustration', in Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria: gli antecedenti e il contesto, 2nd ed., Rome, 1985, pp. 317-38.
2. On the origins and development of the veduta, see S. Susinno, La veduta nella pittura italiana, Florence, 1964;
3. and various articles in Giovanni Battista Piranesi e la veduta a Roma e a Venezia nella prima metà del Settecento, Rome, 1990.
4. J.G. Legrand, Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de G.B. Piranesi (manuscript of 1779 or 1801), in Grafica Grafica II, 2, Rome: Calcografia Nazionale, 1976, p. 139, stated that the artist was a student of Ferdinando Bibiena.
5. Andrew Robison, Piranesi: Early Architectural Fantasies, a catalogue raisonne of the etchings, Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1986, p. 9, finds no evidence of this, but does not dispute Bibiena's influence on the printmaker. Another novelty which Piranesi brings to the vedute was to illustrate the ruined ancient monuments as if the debris of intervening ages had been removed.
6. for example, Il Campo Marzio, Rome, 1762, plates 14, 15, 17, 29.
7. John Pinto, 'Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 35, 1, March 1976, pp. 35-50, especially p. 50. Piranesi helped Giambattista Nolli create the small ichnographic plan of Rome in 1748.
8. The term 'perspective plan' is coined by Lucia Nuti, 'The Perspective Plan in the Sixteenth Century: the invention of a representational language', Art Bulletin 84, 1, March 1994, pp. 105-128.
9. Pirro Ligorio, Antiquae urbis imago, Venice, 1561, used this type of illustration for his archaeological reconstructions.
10. H. Lotz, 'The Rendering of the interior in architectural drawings of the Renaissance', Studies in Italian Renaissance Architecture, Cambridge, MA, 1977, pp. 1-65.
11. For its use in an archaeological publication, see Pietro Santi Bartoli, Gli antichi sepolchri ovvero mausolei romani et etruschi, Rome, 1697. Wilton-Ely, op. cit. (note 1), p. 318, notes the 'accidental' sections created when the section is revealed within a view of a ruined monument.
12. The history of this genre is treated summarily in David Rosand, 'Capriccio: Goya and a graphic tradition', in Janis A. Tomlinson, Graphic Evolutions: the print series of Francesco Goya, Columbia Studies on Art, 2, New York, 1989, pp. 3-9.
13. Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, London, 1987
14. and his The Complete Etchings of Piranesi, 2 vols., San Francisco, 1993; and on the artist's early career, Robison, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 9-11.
15. Jonathan Scott, Piranesi, London, 1975.
16. Antichità Romane de' tempi della repubblica e de' primi imperatori, 1748 (later reissued under the new title, Alcune vedute di archi trionfale to avoid confusion with the 1756 publication of a similar name)
17. and Camera sepolcrali degli antichi romani le quali esistono dentro e di fuori di Roma, Rome, c. 1750.
18. Le Rovine del Castello dell'Acqua Giulia, issued in 1761, explored the history and function of the ruinous monument known as the Castello, which was once used to distribute water through ancient Rome. Il Campo Marzio, 1762, aimed at a reconstruction of the area of ancient Rome for which it was titled; its text was the most lengthy of all the archaeological publications, and it considered the Campo Marzio at six different periods in Roman history. The four publications dealing with subjects of monuments from the Laziale region include Descrizione e Disegno dell'Emissario del Lago Albano, approved in April 1762 and issued by the next year. It explored the legendary and extensive drainage system leading from the Lago Albano to the Laziale countryside. In Di due spelonche ornate dagli antichi, also approved in 1762 and issued later, Piranesi explored two caves on the banks of the Lago Albano thought to have served the ancients as both sanctuaries and bathing cabanas. Antichità di Albano e di Castel Grandolfo, published in 1764 and Antichità di Cora, also 1764, considered the major monuments of these communities. Lastly, Lapides Capitolini, 1761, featured one fold-out illustration of the fragmented ancient plaques known as the Fasti Consolari and the Fasti Trionfali. It was slightly different from the others in that its text, a transcription of the inscriptions on those plaques, was in Latin.
19. For example, Ridolfino Venuti's Osservazione sopra il fiume Clitunno detto in oggi le Vene situato tra Spoleto e Fuligno,...e del antichissimo tempio, Rome, 1753, deals with some of the same monuments in Piranesi's Antichità di Cora.
20. Arnaldo Monigliano, 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 13, 1950, pp. 295-307.
21. Hans Gross, Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment: the post-Tridentine syndrome and the ancien regime, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp. 263-8. Those at the forefront of this trend were the Benedictine monks of St Maur, Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon. In Italy, followers of this trend included the Benedictine Benedetto Bacchini, Marchese Scipione Maffei, Ludovico Muratori and Francesco Bianchini.
22. On Piranesi's stance in the Greco-Romano controversy, see Rudolf Wittkower, 'Piranesi's "Parere sull'Architettura"', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 2, 1938, pp. 147-58
23. and Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Polemical Works, Farnsborough, 1972.
24. Antichità Romane, vol. 1 of 4, 1756, introduction
25. and Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Piranesi, op. cit. (note 8), p. 48.
26. Raphael's interest in reconstructing ancient Rome has long been a subject of study. For one of the more recent studies, see Howard Burns and A. Nesselrath, 'Raffaello e l'antico', in Raffaello architetto, eds C. Frommel, S. Ray and M. Tafuri, Milan, 1984, pp. 379-452.
27. see Burns, 'Pirro Ligorio's reconstruction of ancient Rome: the "Antiquae Urbis Imago" of 1561', in Pirro Ligorio: artist and antiquarian. The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 10, Florence, 1988, pp. 19-92.
28. above n. 12. The reliance on the visual object as an important source of history, paired with an increased scepticism of ancient texts, engendered great change in Italian epistemological investigations. On the archaeological investigation of the Etruscan past, see Mauro Cristofani, La scoperta degli Etruschi: archeologia e antiquaria nel '700, Rome, 1983.
29. Ludovico Muratori, Della forza della fantasia umana, Venice, 1745. On p. 6, he stated: 'Noi con questo nome ["Mente" or mind, of which fantasy was a part] intendiamo la Facoltà o Potenza, che ha l'Anima nostra di pensare, cioè di apprendere le Idee delle cose, di combinarle, di dividerle, di astraere, di giudicare, di formar assioni universali, di razioncinare, di fare altre simili azioni ...' On p. 25, he stated '... proviamo con certezza, che i Sensi applicato agli oggetti materiali, ne trasportano al Cerebro l'Idea o sia l'Immagine. Queste Immagini non possiam concepirle se per minutissime cose, e come un compendio ...'
30. This notion of fantasia as understood by some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century thinkers is discussed in Sharon Fermor, Piero di Cosimo: Fiction, Invention and Fantasia, London, 1993, pp. 29-334.
31. For the recognition of invenzione as a spirit which informs pre-scientific archaeological methods of the sixteenth century, see Philip Jacks, 'The Simulachrum of Fabio Calvo: a view of Roman architecture "all'antica" in 1527', Art Bulletin, vol. 72, 3, September 1990, pp. 453-81.
32. I Trofei d'Ottaviano Augusto innalzati per la vittoria ad Actium e conquista dell'Egitto, Rome, 1753.
33. Alan Ceen, 'Introduction', to The Pianta Grande di Roma of G.B. Nolli in facsimile, Highmount, NY, 1984, p. III.
34. Mary-Anne Zagdoun, 'Note sur un relief de la Villa Albani', Melanges de l'école français de Rome: Antiquité 92, 2, 1980, pp. 915-24.
35. Francesco Bianchini, Camera ed iscrizioni sepulcrali de' liberi, servi ed ufficiali della casa d'Augusto, Rome, 1727.
36. On the re-use of the prints, see A.M. Hind, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: a critical study, rpt., New York, 1967, pp. 81-2
37. Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Piranesi, op. cit. (note 8), p. 46, among others. All the prints in Piranesi's Camera sepolcrali degli antichi romani, Rome, c. 1750, reappear, although in a different sequence in his Antichità Romane, op. cit. (note 14), vol. 4.
38. For Piranesi's mention of the library of Giobbe (1705-1748) and his easy access to it, se e Piranesi, Prima parte, Rome, 1743, dedication;
39. and George Brunel, 'Recherches sur les début de Piranèsè à Rome: les frères Pagliarini et Nicola Giobbe', in Piranèsè et les français, Colloque tenu à la Villa Medicis, Florence, 1976, ed. G. Brunel, Rome, 1978, pp. 77-146. Giobbe's library included a copy of Bianchini's Camera ed iscrizioni sepulcrale (p. 110, 392v) and possibly, L'istoria universale (p. 118, 407v).
40. On Giobbe, see Pinto, The Trevi Fountain, New Haven and London, 1986, p. 174.
41. Piranesi cited Bianchini's De profundit. Lac. Alban.
42. On the nephew, see S. Rotta, 'Giuseppe Bianchini', in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 10, Rome. 1955, pp. 200-205. Giuseppe also helped create the Museo Sacro or Cristiano in the Vatican, a much-beloved but unrealized project of his uncle.
43. G. Morelli, 'Il Museo " Cristiano" di Benedetto XIV, Bolletino dei monumenti, musei e gallerie pontificie, ii, 1971, pp. 57-74.
44. Giuseppe also supplied the 'spiegazione istorica' to Giuseppe Vasi, Magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna, 10 vols, Rome, 1747-54. The publication was issued just after Piranesi had left Vasi's workshop.
45. On Bottari, see G. Pignatelli and A. Petrucci, 'Giovanni Gaetano Bottari', in Dizionario biogragico, vol. 13, 1971, pp. 409-18. Bottari's publications on the visual arts include Dialoghi sopra le tre arti del disegno, Lucca, 1754.
46. On his association with Piranesi, see Augusta Monferini, 'Piranesi e Bottari', in Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 221-40.
47. On Venuti, see Franco Prinzi, 'Ridolfino Venuti tra antiquaria e archeologia', in Ridolfino Venuti, Accurata e succinta descrizione topografica delle Antichità di Roma (Rome, 1763), facs ed., Rome, 1968, pp. 1-15;
48. and Diana Gallo, 'Ridolfino Venuti, antiquario illuminato', in L'accademia etrusca, eds P. Barocchi and D. Gallo, Milan, 1985, pp. 84-106. Piranesi supplied the vedute for Venuti's Accurata e succinta descrizione (cited above).
49. On his relationship with Piranesi, see Monferini, 'Piranesi e l'ambiente di Ridolfino Venuti', in Piranesi tra Venezia e l'Europa, ed. Alessandro Bettagno, Florence, 1983, pp. 35-44. The office in question was that of presidente delle antichità or Superintendent of Roman antiquities.
50. On Bianchini, see S. Rotta, 'Francesco Bianchini', in Dizionario biogragico, op. cit. (note 33), vol. 10, pp. 187-205;
51. Francesco Uglietti, Un erudito Veronese alle soglie del Settecento: Mons. Francesco Bianchini, 1662-1729, Verona, 1986;
52. Christopher Johns, Papal Art and Cultural Politics: Rome in the age of Clement XI, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 33-7;
53. and Hans Gross, Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment, op. cit. (note 12), pp. 252-65.
54. L'istoria universale, 9. 'Mentre però si maturano così fruttuosi pensieri di spiriti più esercitati, essendomi caduta alla mentre una spezie di compendio differente da gli altri, e ... non del tutto inutile al fine, che io mi era proposto di formare una idea chiara, intiera, e connessa dell'istoria del Mondo ...'; and ibid., dedication, 'Delle antichità non vediamo più i frammenti, che i corpo.'
55. Globus Farnesianus was eventually published by Francesco's nephew Giuseppe as part of the Demonstratio Historiae Ecclesiasticae quadripartitae comprobatae monumentis pertinentibus ad fidem temporum et gestorum, 3 vols, Rome, 1752, 1753 and 1754; see text, below. Also, Bianchini reconstructed the Julian calendar using information deriving from an ancient fragment. See his De Kalendario et cyclo Caesaris, Rome, 1705.
56. His findings from the excavation of the Palatine Hill were published posthumously in Del Palazzo de' Cesari, Verona, 1738. For more on this publication, see Henry Millon, 'Reconstructions of the Palatine in the Eighteenth Century', in Eius Virtutis Studiosi: Classical and Postclassical studies in memory of Frank Edward Brown, eds R.T. Scott and A.R. Scott, Washington, 1993, pp. 479-93;
57. and Werner Oechslin, 'Storia d'archeologia prima del Piranesi: nota su Francesco Bianchini', in Piranesi nei luoghi di Piranesi: 3, Archeologia Piranesiana, Rome, 1979, pp. 107-20. Oechslin noted the intellectual debt Piranesi owed to Bianchini in regard to the art of reconstruction.
58. Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: from magic to science, trans. S. Rabinovitch, London, 1968, pp. 44-51.
59. A debate about the age of the earth raged among theologians, historians and scientists of the day. See Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, 1981, pp. 380-1.
60. Alessandro Mazzoleni, Vita di Mons. Francesco Bianchini veronese, Venice, 1735, p. 20, stated and many reiterate (e.g., F. Lanza, 'L'istoria universale del Bianchini e la Scienza Nuova', in Lettere italiane, 10, Florence, 1958, p. 340, n. 3) that Bianchini himself engraved the images of the 1697 issue. It is certain that Bianchini designed his own illustrations but unlikely that he engraved them.
61. Johns, L'istoria universale, op. cit. (note 36), pp. 22-38. Johns argues that in the early eighteenth century the political power of the Papacy became increasingly enervated in the European arena. As part of a conscious Papal policy to abate the loss of power, Clement XI aggressively fostered scholarly research in history, especially a history that rooted Roman supremacy and legitimized Papal jurisdictions then being threatened. In keeping with the cultural politics of the day, Bianchini's universal history suggests that Roman culture was the recipient and embodiment of all past cultural achievements.
62. Among many examples, see Piranesi, Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi, Rome, 1778, p. 43. The candelabra design incorporates the bas-relief used by Bianchini, p. 77 (ch. 2 illustration).
63. Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635-1700), Le antiche lucerne sepolcrali figurate raccolte dalle cave sotterranee e grotte di Roma, Rome, 1691.
64. Onofrio Panvinio (1529-68), De ludis circensibus, 2 vols, Verona, 1600.
65. Francesco Angeloni, La historia augusta di Giulio Cesare infino a Constantino il Magno, Rome, 1641.
66. Theodor de Bry (1528-98), Americae, 9 vols, Frankfurt, 1590-1602.
67. Piranesi, Antichità Romane
68. introduction, discussed by Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Eye of Piranesi, op. cit. (note 8), p. 48.
69. Among others, see Robison, The Mind and Eye of Piranesi, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 25-32
70. A. Hyatt Mayer, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, New York, 1952, p. 6. On the dating of the Grotteschi, see Robison, pp. 11, 25 and 30, after Piranesi's return to Rome in September of 1747, and ibid., p. 15, on the first issues of the prints. On the problems of establishing a set order for the prints, see ibid., pp. 116-22.
71. Maurizio Calvesi, 'Nota ai grotteschi o capricci di Piranesi', in Piranesi e la cultura antiquaria, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 125-40.
72. His observations are akin to those he made in 'Introduction', in Henri Focillon, Giovanni-Battista Piranesi, trans. M. Calvesi and A. Monferini, Bologna, 1967, p. x. Calvesi embellished Gaston Bachelard's characterization of the four prints as illustrations of the four ages of man, the four seasons, the four elements and humours, and argued that the stages in the history of humankind might be those of Vico as set out in his Scienza Nuova, as progressing from the age of the giants to the age of civilization. Calvesi's observations are not without basis; Bianchini influenced Vico's ideas regarding history.
73. See Lanza,Henri Focillon, Giovanni-Battista Piranesi, op. cit. (note 45), pp. 339-48.
74. Scott,Henri Focillon, Giovanni-Battista Piranesi, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 51-2.
75. Peter Tomory, 'Piranesi's Grotteschi: "All is Vanity ..."', Storia dell'arte, vol. 88, 1996, pp. 334-40.
76. and F. Bianchini, Carte da giuoco in servigio dell'istoria e delle cronologia. Bologna, 1871. Today twenty-two cards from the last half of the second desk remain (45-50; 56-60; 66-70; 75-80). They are preserved among the manuscripts in Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, Cod. Bianchini CCCCXXXIII, f. XIV, 3. The appearance of four other cards (51, 55, 65 and 74) is known because they are reproduced in Bianchini, 1871, n.p.
77. This idea can be found also in Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico, eds T.G. Bergin and M.H. Fisch, rev. ed., Ithaca, NY, 1970, p. 37.
78. and Carte de giuoco, p. 18.
79. The Grotteschi each measure approx. 39 × 55 cm, which is much larger than Bianchini's cards, which measure 6.5 × 9 cm. Bianchini recommended, however, that one way to use his carte was to leave them uncut as a sheet measuring 38 × 60 cm, and use the sheet to play a board game comparable to that of Goose. Bianchini, Carte da giuoco, p. 2. Perhaps Piranesi was aware of this when he chose the size of his capricci.
80. Antonio G. Barbazza, 'Al discreto lettore', in Francesco Bianchini, L'istoria universale, Rome, 1747, n. p. '[M]i venne accrescuita tal voglia dalla rarità de' primi esemplari, e dalla perdita deplorabile, che segni dopo la morta [di Francesco] ... di tutti i rama, che l'adornavano; i quali ora, essendomi accinto all'opera, ho dovuto dal primo all'ultimo di nuovo intalgliare ...' On Antonio Giuseppe Barbazza, a Roman painter and engraver (b. 1722 - Barbazza was two years younger than Piranesi), see entry in Thieme-Becker, vol. 2, p. 466.
81. G. Bianchini, Methodus Historiae Ecclesiasticae quadripartitae et in XVI saecula distributae, Rome, 1746, anticipates the completion of the first volume by six years.
82. Demonstratio Historiae Ecclesiasticae, op. cit. (note 38), 1752-4. v. 1, contained fourteen of the proposed twenty engravings.
83. On Cenni (1698-1762 or 1763), one of the scholars involved in this project, see F. Tessitore, 'Gaetano Cenni', in Dizionario biografico, op. cit. (note 33), vol. 23, 1979, pp. 552-4.
84. Barbazza's letter of apology is included in this publication, p. 3. (Legrand, in Grafica Grafica, op. cit. (note 2), p. 142, mentions a Francesco Barbazza as a vedutista in the manner of Vasi, who is known to have worked with Francesco, one of Gian Paolo Pannini's sons.)
85. Pier Leone Ghezzi, Gian Paolo Pannini and his son Giuseppe, Pompeo Battoni, Agostino Massucci and Louis Gabriel Blanchet were also interested in the artistic project. They jointly signed a letter of praise for the first volume of Demonstratio Historiae Ecclesiasticae. The progress of this lengthy project could have been followed by any reader of the Giornale de' Letterati, issued in Rome from 1742 to 1759. In 1757 Barbazza announced that he intended to complete the fourth volume of Giuseppe Bianchini's project by the following year, but he did not.
86. First, Piranesi's Grotteschi are roughly the same size as the prints created for the Demonstratio Historiae Ecclesiasticae. Secondly, the cryptic and incomplete inscription in the upper right-hand corner of the first Grotteschi might reveal Piranesi's intent. It states, according to Robison,Gian Paolo Pannini and his son Giuseppe, op. cit. (note 2),: 'otto qatrin/foglie a/i che stens/allegramente.' It could be interpreted to mean that Piranesi would happily supply the eight-odd prints or sheets to complete or extend the thirty-two chapters of Bianchini's L'istoria universale into the forty which had been proposed for volume one