Observations on the letter of Monsieur Mariette : with opinions on architecture, and a preface to a new treatise on the introduction and progress of the fine arts in Europe in ancient times
Bibliographic Information
Observations on the letter of Monsieur Mariette : with opinions on architecture, and a preface to a new treatise on the introduction and progress of the fine arts in Europe in ancient times
Giovanni Battista Piranesi ; introduction by John Wilton-Ely ; translation by Caroline Beamish and David Britt
（Texts & documents）
Getty Research Institute, c2002
- Other Title
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Osservazioni sopra la lettre de M. Mariette aux auteurs de la Gazette littéraire de l'Europe
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Note
"Translation of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Osservazioni sopra la lettre de M. Mariette aux auteurs de la Gazette littéraire de l'Europe, inserita nel supplemento dell'istessa gazzetta stampata dimanche 4. novembre MDCCLIV; e Parere su l'architettura, con una prefazione ad un nuovo trattato Della introduzione e del progresso delle belle arti in Europa ne' tempi antichi (Rome: Generoso Salomoni, 1765)"--Verso of t.p.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-170) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Published in 1765, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's "Osservazioni" is an impassioned defence of the superiority of Roman architectural "invention" over the "beautiful and noble simplicity" of Ancient Greece. In this three-part polemical work, the engraver and designer not only praises the structural audacity of Etruscan architecture and contends that the Etruscans - not the Greeks - were the artistic mentors of the Romans, but also argues for a Roman-inspired exuberance in design that draws freely on all forms and traditions of ancient art. Although Piranesi's essentially Baroque vision set him at odds with the austere aesthetics of Neoclassicism, his ideas were inspirational to such gifted 18th-century architects as Robert Adam, John Soane, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, and Etienne-Louis Boullee. Piranesi's plea for imaginative eclecticism remains topical, as practitioners and theorists continue to debate the relative merits of a rational and minimal architecture versus an architecture rich in ornament and historical references.
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Texts & documents
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Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities , Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities , Distributed by the University of Chicago Press