Author Description

Piranesi has a powerful appeal for our time. His brilliance as a graphic artist, his transformation of the European vision of Classical antiquity, and his themes of fantasy have been the focus of considerable study in recent years. But though these aspects are important for an appreciation of Piranesi’s visual significance, they have tended to obscure other factors essential for a complete understanding of his unique achievement. In this copiously illustrated study, John Wilton-Ely – one of the world’s foremost authorities on Piranesi – offers a full reappraisal of the complex personality of an astonishingly versatile artist. His book covers every aspect of Piranesi’s life and work, emphasizing especially his importance as a pioneer of Roman archaeology, the high quality of his technical illustrations, and his role in the great Graeco-Roman debate of the 1760s. The author brings to life the Enlightenment world of the artist’s ideas – fundamentally bound up with the birth of Neo-Classicism – and the search for an appropriately modern form of expression; and he shows the practical and influential form taken by these ideas in Piranesi’s architectural projects, his designs for furniture and decorative schemes and his imaginative restoration of antiquities.