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piranesi
Emil Kaufmann

1955
"Giambattista Piranesi" in Architecture in the Age of Reason

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282. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini . . . con un ragionamento apologetico in difesa dell'architettura Egizia e Toscana (Text in Italian, English, French; Rome, 1769), p. 5.
283. Ibid., p. 5.

In the text of his Apologetical Essay in Defence of Egyptian and Tuscan Architecture, Piranesi once again appears as a defender of the Baroque system, especially of the hierarchical principle. He blames overdecoration by quoting Montesquieu: Un édifice chargé d'ornemens est une énigme pour les yeux, comme un poème confus l'est pour l'esprit.²⁸² Yet he makes clear that it is not simply "the multiplicity of ornaments that offends the eye," but such multiplicity as "for want of order and disposition troubles and confounds the eye." Or, more specifically:

The want of the high and low [his italics] which constitutes as well in art as nature a certain variety of degrees, and preeminence of merit, so that some parts appear principal, and others serve only to accompany the first.²⁸³

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