• Veduta della vasta Fontana di Trevi anticamente detta l’Acqua Vergine, in Vedute di Roma, 1740s–1778

Curatorial Notes:

• Popular with tourists, Piranesi’s Roman views were his most financially successful prints. This unique volume has 26 early impressions of his vedute, which he began to produce around 1746 and continued to make throughout his entire career. He kept these copperplates and sold the prints to bookshops and print dealers. There are book-like aspects to the views’ production. For example, Piranesi made a title page or frontispiece for them, a marketing strategy that had existed since the mid-sixteenth century. He also considered writing a text to accompany the views, a piece that might have provided intellectual coherence to a group of individual scenes. Compared to the small view of the Trevi Fountain that he sold to a publisher in order to meet the market, this larger view of the same subject shows how Piranesi used expanding formats to develop context, increase scale, and add complexity.

Date:

• 1740

Format:

• Book

Extent:

• 26 plates.

Creator:

• Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 1720-1778

Publisher:

• Rome, Priv. print. [1740]

Language:

• Italian

Subject:

• Rome (Italy)—Pictorial works
• Architecture—Italy—Rome
• Engraving, Italian
• Rome (Italy)—Antiquities
• Decoration and ornament, Architectural

Author:

• Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 1720-1778

Provenance:

• In case; contemporary full vellum with stubs of ties.

Source acquisition:

• Purchase; Paul Pronté (Paris), December 1969.

Description:

• Title from spine of case.

Credit line:

• Rare Books, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library

View in catalog:

• https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9924199003506421

Identifier:

• ark:/88435/5m60r238x