Le Antichità Romane, vol. 1. Rome: A. Rotilj, 1756

Curatorial Notes:

This battered volume of the Antichità Romane demonstrates vividly the effects that the market for Piranesi’s prints has had on his books. This cannibalized copy, in which individual images have been excised from their pages, shows how owners of Piranesi’s books pursued his prints without regard to their original formats or intellectual contexts. Prints can be hung as art on walls, and so for centuries they have been more commercially valuable than books, although this is no longer the case. This particular volume has a fascinating history. It once belonged to James Caulfeild, the wayward patron of the Antichità Romane who Piranesi infamously memorialized in his Lettere di giustificazione. Caulfeild’s coat-of-arms appear on the book’s binding.

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Catalogo ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichità posseduti dal conte Cicognara 3828
F. Vinton, Subject-catalogue of the Library of College of New Jersey, (1884), p. 622, col. 1, shelf mark "Cabinet 3.25-28"

Description:

Vol. 1 contains an additional 13 plates at the end, some dated 1787 and 2 by Francesco Piranesi. Vol. 3 has an additional double plate at the end signed: Cav. Piranesi F so must be dated after 1765. Described in A. M. Hind's Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1922, p. 83.
SAX copy, tomo 1: Incomplete: Title page and all leaves between page 40 and page iii (second series) wanting. Only plates v-vii present at beginning of volume. Catalogue information for Charlmont Library auction, 1892, pasted in.

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