Colour Plate & Illustrated
PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista.
Della magnificenza ed architetura de' Romani ... [WITH] Osservazioni ... sopra la lettre de M. Mariette ...
Rome 1761-65. First edition. Large folio (61 x 45.5 cm approx.), first work: [ii], 212pp., 2 etched title-pages, etched dedication portrait, 38 etched plates (4 folding, 8 double-page); second work: 23pp., etched title-page, 9 etched plates (6 double-page), UNCUT, contemporary marbled boards rebacked and re-cornered modern vellum, bookplate of Consul Smith, a fine copy.
A fine copy with impeccable provenance of Piranesi's two major theoretical works. Piranesi had been working on Della Magnificenza for some time when the 1758 publication of Le Roy's Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Gréce prompted its expansion. Le Roy claimed that Roman art was an inferior imitation of Greek art. Piranesi rebutted this by advancing three arguments; firstly that the Greeks had copied the Etruscans; that Etruscan art was finer than Greek; and finally that Etruscan architecture derived from the monumental style of the Egyptians, and it was this that the Romans emulated. The Osservazioni is really a supplement to the Magnificenza which came about as a reply to Pierre-Jean Mariette who claimed that the Etruscans were merely Greek colonists. Consul Joseph Smith (1673/4?-1770), book collector, and patron of the arts, was appointed British consul in Venice in 1744. His collections became one of the recognized features of the Grand Tour. Following a loss of his fortune in the 1750s, his first book collection was sold to King George III and later formed the basis of the King's Collection in the British Library. His second collection was auctioned in London after his death. Cicognara 3833; Focillon 927-926; Hind, Piranesi, 84-95; cf. Millard, Italian books, 99 (2nd edition).
Price: £ 15000
US Dollar Price: $ 22540
Stock Number: 64118