June 2023
The 2023 display presents a selection of prints from the Vedute series, with one additional plate of the tomb of Cecilia Metella from the Antichità Romane. All the vedute prints in the BSR Ashby collection (thirty-three in total, some were displayed in our June 2021 and Nov 2022 exhibitions) come from the first set of sixty images he produced, thirty-four of which were initially gathered into a volume, now very rare, called Le Magnificenze di Roma published by Bouchard in 1751, thus they are all early compositions, although the presence of the address in the captions of each of the BSR vedute: Presso l’autore a Strada Felice nel Palazzo Tomati vicino alla Trinità de’ monti… indicates a date of printing post-1761, when Piranesi moved his home and operations there from the via del Corso.
The theme of this exhibition is to trace an itinerary with the prints, from the Piazza del Popolo, south through the Campo Marzio and the Forum, up to the Quirinal into Monti and beyond. Piranesi’s view technique and his style of composition is contrasted with that of his contemporary and erstwhile teacher Giuseppe Vasi who, in his famous Itinerario and Magnificenze books, published views of almost every notable monument and building across 18th century Rome.
There are many different ways to approach these vedute: as topographical documents, as examples of his creative art or as genre scenes in the Venetian manner with which he would have been familiar as a young man. The Piranesi scholar Arthur M. Hind in the 1920s summed up admirably the unique Piranesian synthesis:
“In spite of Piranesi’s extraordinary faculty of invention, he never allowed his topographical and archaeological plates to fall into the false picturesque. Scholars and students of Roman archaeology, such as Jordan, Lanciani, and Dr. Thomas Ashby, all recognize the value of his plates as topographical documents. And he seldom failed to combine this documentary truth with a noble dignity of composition.”
Clare Hornsby, June 2023
The 2023 exhibition is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague Harriet O’Neill
June 2023
The 2023 display presents a selection of prints from the Vedute series, with one additional plate of the tomb of Cecilia Metella from the Antichità Romane. All the vedute prints in the BSR Ashby collection (thirty-three in total, some were displayed in our June 2021 and Nov 2022 exhibitions) come from the first set of sixty images he produced, thirty-four of which were initially gathered into a volume, now very rare, called Le Magnificenze di Roma published by Bouchard in 1751, thus they are all early compositions, although the presence of the address in the captions of each of the BSR vedute: Presso l’autore a Strada Felice nel Palazzo Tomati vicino alla Trinità de’ monti… indicates a date of printing post-1761, when Piranesi moved his home and operations there from the via del Corso.
The theme of this exhibition is to trace an itinerary with the prints, from the Piazza del Popolo, south through the Campo Marzio and the Forum, up to the Quirinal into Monti and beyond. Piranesi’s view technique and his style of composition is contrasted with that of his contemporary and erstwhile teacher Giuseppe Vasi who, in his famous Itinerario and Magnificenze books, published views of almost every notable monument and building across 18th century Rome.
There are many different ways to approach these vedute: as topographical documents, as examples of his creative art or as genre scenes in the Venetian manner with which he would have been familiar as a young man. The Piranesi scholar Arthur M. Hind in the 1920s summed up admirably the unique Piranesian synthesis:
“In spite of Piranesi’s extraordinary faculty of invention, he never allowed his topographical and archaeological plates to fall into the false picturesque. Scholars and students of Roman archaeology, such as Jordan, Lanciani, and Dr. Thomas Ashby, all recognize the value of his plates as topographical documents. And he seldom failed to combine this documentary truth with a noble dignity of composition.”
Clare Hornsby, June 2023
The 2023 exhibition is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague Harriet O’Neill