![]() ![]() The first thing you see as you enter the exhibition is Piranesi’s View of the Principal Prospect of the Column of Trajan unfolded in full. 2 Piranesi, ‘Veduta del prospetto principale della Colonna Trajana’, from Trofeo o sia magnifica colonna coclide, 1775. We see Rome on the cusp between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-when Rome that was reshaped by ambitious papal building projects and urban transformations (as seen in Piranesi’s views of St Peter’s Square, the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona)-and Rome of the modern era, which Piranesi highlights in engravings of recent building projects such as the elegant Spanish Steps (completed in 1725) and the Villa Albani (home to Cardinal Alessandro Albani a major patron of art and architecture and at the centre of the key intellectual circle of eighteenth-century Rome).įig. They also record aspects of the Early Modern city of Rome that are also now, in many ways, lost. His views of Rome stand as a record of the past glories of Ancient Rome, each engraving carefully labelled so that we can identify the fragments of ruined monuments. ![]() Piranesi wrote this in his preface to the Antichità romane and it is just one of his many statements that declare his dedication to Rome. ‘When I first saw the remains of the ancient buildings of Rome lying as they do in cultivated fields or in gardens and wasting away under the ravages of time, or being destroyed by greedy owners who sell them as materials for modern buildings, I determined to preserve them for ever by means of my engravings’ – Giovanni Battista Piranesi State Library of Victoria, 22nd February until 22nd June 2014. 1 Piranesi, 'View of the Spanish Steps in Piazza di Spagna', from Vedute di Roma, 1746-48. ![]()
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