The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project
Stephen Lauf



2020.02.05
The fact that the circus plans within both the Pianta dell antico Foro Romano and the Ichnographia Campus Martius were changed from fanciful reconstructions to technically acurate deliniations dictates a reconsideration as to why Piranesi made the changes and kept the changes secret.


Ichnographia Campus Martius
Pianta dell antico Foro Romano
first state


Ichnographia Campus Martius
Pianta dell antico Foro Romano
second state

Among these polemically directed treatises of the 1760s, there is one which stands apart by virtue of its originality as well as by its intimate connection with Piranesi's artistic development -- Il Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma. Although published in 1762, like Della Magnificenza, its preparation extends well back into the previous decade, originating as a rejected part of Antichità Romane. Certain implications in its general approach, however, anticipate a significant change taking place in Piranesi's intellectual and artistic life by the mid-1760s.
Il Campo Marzio had grown out of the Ichnographia, the large map reconstructing the monumental quarter of Rome between the modern Via del Corso and the Tiber. This itself was envisaged as complementary to the "fragments" containing Piranesi's reconstructiond plans of the Nymphaeum of Nero, the Forum Romanum and the Capitoline Hill in the Antichità. The preparation of the Ichnographia, moreover, was closely related to the tense if productive relationship between Robert Adam and Piranesi between 1755-7. Before Adam's final departure from Rome in April 1757, Piranesi had already begun work on the dedicatory plate at the top of the map (actually dated that year), presumably having a basic conception of the portion overlaid by the inscription. By then he had also decided that the map should form a part of a complete treatise devoted to this area of monumental Rome.
John Wilton-Ely, The Mind and Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 73.




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