Parte di Ampio Magnifico Porto by Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Beautiful Fantasy Architecture

Parte di Ampio Magnifico Porto

Parte di Ampio Magnifico Porto Engraving c1749-50 by Italian Artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 – 1778); painter, classical archaeologist and architect know for his etchings of Rome and fictitious atmospheric prisons.

From the MetMuseum

Parte di ampio magnifico Porto all’uso degli antichi Romani, ove si scuopre l’interno della gran Piazza pel Comercio… (Part of a spacious and magnificent Harbor for the use of the ancient Romans opening onto a large market square…), from Opere Varie di Archiettura, prospettive, grotteschi, antichità; inventate, ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi Architetto Veneziano (Various Works of Architecture, perspectives, grotesques, and antiquities; designed and etched by Giambattista Piranesi, Venetian Architect)

In the dedication to his first publication, the Prima parte di architettura e di prospettiva of 1743, a series of imaginary views, Piranesi wrote that his observations of the vast remaining piles of marble and the immense spaces once occupied by ancient buildings had filled his spirit with magnificent images.

Since he despaired of anyone financing such grand structures, he had decided to share his visions through means of prints.

In the Parte di ampio magnifico Porto, an addition to this series of architectural fantasies that was created some years later, we witness one of his most visionary reconstructions of Rome’s former grandeur.

While an impressive stairway had recently been constructed at the Port of Ripetta in Rome – perhaps one of Piranesi’s inspirations in creating a design for a port; the combination of buildings illustrated in this etching could never actually be built.

Among the spatial ambiguities, apparently deliberate, the three curving walls, as of a giant amphitheater or the interior walls of the Pantheon, do not relate logically to each other.

In the inscription plate which Piranesi added to the second state of the print, many of the features of the port are explained, such as the rostral columns that commemorate naval victories, and the altar to Neptune, from which clouds of incense issue ceaselessly.

The idea of landing at such a splendid port is thrilling, although it would be nicer if Piranesi hadn’t informed us that the liquid pouring from the lions’ head spouts is sewage.

This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image.

Info Below Derived From Wikipedia.org

Piranesi was the son of a stonemason and was born in Venice, in the parish of S. Moisè where he was baptized. His brother Andrea introduced him to Latin literature and ancient Greco-Roman civilization.

Later he was apprenticed under his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, who was a leading architect in Magistrato delle Acque, the state organization responsible for engineering and restoring historical buildings.

From 1740, Giovanni had an opportunity to work in Rome as a draughtsman for Marco Foscarini, the Venetian ambassador of the new Pope Benedict XIV.

He resided in the Palazzo Venezia and studied under Giuseppe Vasi, who introduced him to the art of etching and engraving of the city and its monuments.

Giuseppe Vasi found that Giovanni’s talent was much greater than that of a mere engraver; according to Legrand, Vasi told Piranesi that “you are too much of a painter, my friend, to be an engraver.”

After his studies with Vasi concluded, he collaborated with pupils of the French Academy in Rome to produce a series of vedute (views) of the city.

In 1743 Giovanni created his first work the Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive, and followed that up in 1745 with Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna.

From 1743 to 1747 Giovanni was mainly in Venice where, according to some sources, he often visited Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, a leading artist in Venice.

It was Tiepolo who expanded the restrictive conventions of reproductive, topographical and antiquarian engravings.

Giovanni then returned to Rome, where he opened a workshop in Via del Corso; and in 1748 – 1774 he created an important series of vedute of the city which established his fame.

In the meantime Piranesi devoted himself to the measurement of many of the ancient buildings, which led to the publication of Le Antichità Romane de’ tempo della prima Repubblica e dei primi imperatori (“Roman Antiquities of the Time of the First Republic and the First Emperors”).

In 1761 he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca and opened a printing house of his own. In 1762 the Campo Marzio dell’antica Roma collection of engravings was printed.

The following year he was commissioned by Pope Clement XIII to restore the choir of San Giovanni in Laterano, but the work did not materialize.

In 1764, one of the Pope’s nephews, Cardinal Rezzonico, appointed him to start his only architectural work, the restoration of the church of Santa Maria del Priorato in the Villa of the Knights of Malta, on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

He combined Classical Architectural Elements, trophies and escutcheons with his own particular imaginative genius for the design of the facade of the church and the walls of the adjacent Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta.

In 1767 he was made a knight of the Golden Spur, which enabled him to sign himself “Cav[aliere] Piranesi”. In 1769 his publication of a series of ingenious and sometimes bizarre designs for chimneypieces, as well as an original range of furniture pieces, established his place as a versatile and resourceful designer.

In 1776 he created his best known work as a ‘restorer’ of ancient sculpture, the Piranesi Vase, and in 1777 – 78 he published Avanzi degli Edifici di Pesto (Remains of the Edifices of Paestum).