A souvenir the size of a tabletop
An English gentleman on the Grand Tour in the 1760s, with a few weeks in Rome and a tutor to keep him out of trouble, wanted to take the city home. He went to the shop of Giovanni Battista Piranesi on the Via del Corso and bought views: single sheets as large as a tabletop, each one a monument of Rome in black ink. He had them bound when he got home, and they are the reason a great many English country houses still have a Colosseum in the library.
Le Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome) is the series of about 135 large etchings that Piranesi (1720 to 1778) made of the monuments and ruins of Rome from about 1748 until his death. They were sold singly and in sets, to visitors and to the trade, and they shaped how Europe imagined the city for a century.
What Piranesi showed: ruins, churches, fountains and squares
The series has no fixed order and no fixed subject beyond Rome itself. There are the ancient ruins: the Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, the arches, the baths, the tombs along the Appian Way and the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. There are the churches and palaces of the Baroque city: St Peter’s inside and out, the Palazzo Odescalchi, the Palazzo Farnese. And there are the places where Romans lived: the Piazza Navona, the Piazza del Popolo, the port of the Ripa Grande, the Trevi Fountain.
Each plate carries its title in Piranesi’s own lettering along the bottom, often with a key to the buildings, so the views were as much a guide as a picture. Ancient and modern Rome stand side by side in them, which is how the city looked and still looks.
How he made them: light, shade and a low horizon
Piranesi trained as an architect before he learned to etch, and it shows. He sets the horizon low and the viewpoint close, so that a church front or an arch towers over the page, and he uses perspective and vanishing points to pull the eye deep into the plate. The buildings are immense and the people are tiny, which makes the buildings bigger still.
The drama comes from contrast. Skies are heavy with cloud, shadows from a neighbouring building fall black across a square, and the sunlit stone between them is left almost white. Over thirty years he kept developing his etching, working the plates with a wider range of lines and tones than any view-maker before him, so that the prints are black and white but never flat.
The Rome that disappointed travellers
Piranesi’s Rome is bigger, darker and more dramatic than the real one. Some travellers who had seen the prints first were said to be disappointed when they arrived and found the buildings smaller and the ruins tidier. The views did their work all the same: they are the reason the Colosseum and the Pantheon look, in most people’s minds, the way they look in the Vedute.
The Vedute at Heritage Prints
Our series holds 139 prints, arranged in two parts with their title pages, and includes a map of the city and a plate by Piranesi’s son Francesco. Each is a facsimile of an original edition: photographed at the size it is printed, retouched by hand only where the paper has suffered, and made for us by Re-Art Special Art Productions in Almere on acid-free etching paper of 270 g/m² with archival inks. The sheets measure 81 by 55 centimetres (31.9 by 21.7 inches) with their full margins and lettering. How a facsimile is made.
Every print is numbered in pencil, embossed with our blind stamp and comes with a certificate, in an edition of 250, and lasts more than 100 years under good conditions. Browse the views on Le Vedute di Roma, or ask about the complete set in Solander boxes. The plates are black and white; a view coloured by hand is possible through Custom coloring.
Four views to start with
Questions
How many views are in Piranesi’s Vedute di Roma?
About 135, etched between about 1748 and Piranesi’s death in 1778. Our series has 139 prints, with the title pages, a map of the city and a plate by his son Francesco.
Are the Vedute di Roma engravings or etchings?
Etchings, printed in black ink. Piranesi drew through a wax ground on copper and bit the lines with acid, which allowed the free, varied line that gives the views their depth.
Did Piranesi show Rome as it really was?
Recognisably, but larger and more dramatic. He set the horizon low, made the figures tiny and the shadows black, and some travellers who knew the prints found the real city smaller.