• Opere varie di architettura prospettive grotteschi antichità sul gusto degli antichi romani. Rome, 1750 [this copy c. 1761]

Curatorial Notes:
  • Piranesi created the Opere varie to accomplish several tasks. Although copies of this book vary, they usually include prints from the Prima parte, along with other sets of prints that came to be known as the Grotteschi and the Carceri. Piranesi served up this mixed buffet under one title page to unite his various print suites, disparate in their subjects, in a saleable form. If the complex work has a single theme, it is antiquities, a topic that by this point had begun to unify all Piranesi’s interests. In Polanzani’s portrait, Piranesi presides over the Opere varie as an ancient bust merged with a living man. Shown with a book, and with an inscription that identifies him as a Venetian architect, Piranesi had reached a turning point in how he would organize his future work.
Date:
  • 1750-1769
Format:
  • Book
Type:
  • Pictorial works
Extent:
  • 2 ℓ, 27 plates (part double; incl. plan) 55 cm.
Creator:
Publisher:
  • Roma, l'Autore, 1750 [i.e. ca. 1761]
Language:
  • Italian
Subject:
  • Rome (Italy)—Pictorial works
  • Architecture—Rome
Author:
  • Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 1720-1778
References:
  • F. Vinton, Subject-catalogue of the Library of College of New Jersey, (1884), p. 622, col. 1, shelf mark "Cabinet 3.24.2."
  • Catalogo ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichità posseduti dal conte Cicognara 3826
Description:
  • Added t.-p., engraved: Prima parte di architetture i prospettive inventate ed da Giambatista Piranesi architetto veneziano fra gli arcadi Salcendio Tiseio.
  • Described in A. M. Hind's Giovanni Battista Piranesi, p. 78-81, as later edition B, 1761 or after.
  • In this composite volume, the plates are numbered in pencil in lower corner. This work starts at plate 1 and ends at plate 27.
Credit line:
  • Rare Books, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
View in catalog:
Identifier:
  • ark:/88435/pr76fc88k