Piranesi Giovanni Battista, "internal View Of The Pronaos Of The Pantheon, 1769

Piranesi Giovanni Battista, "Internal view of the Pronaos of the Pantheon, 1769

Views:
Rome: interior of the pronaos of the Pantheon. Male figures. Female figures.
Natural phenomena: light

Etching and burin, circa 1769, signed on the plate at the bottom. Contemporary "Roman" edition of the plate, exemplary in the first state of three described by Hind.

Measurements: H 39 x W 53 cm.

Proof printed on contemporary laid paper without watermark, with full margins, in perfect condition
From the series Views of Rome.

The work consists of 135 plates produced individually by Piranesi over at least 30 years, from around 1745, until the date of his death. Two views created by his son Francesco were then added to the work. They were published for the first time by the publisher Giovanni Bouchard in 1751 (34 plates), subsequently by the same Piranesi publisher at Strada Felice first and then Palazzo Tomati (addresses that appear on many plates), until the final version consisting of 137 plates. After the author's death, the matrices were inherited by his son Francesco, who oversaw their publication first in the capital - the so-called "posthumous Roman" editions - and subsequently in Paris, where three editions were printed - the so-called "first of Paris", an intermediate one (both on laid paper) and the one edited by the publisher Firmin Didot, the first on paper without wire rods, where the plates have the addition of an ordinal Arabic number. All the Parisian editions are rather modest in quality, far from how Piranesi had thought and conceived them. The plates were then acquired by the Chalcografia Camerale, then Calcografia
National, today the Central Institute for Graphics, where they are still preserved.

Bibliography
Arthur M. Hind, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, A critical study (1922), n. 82, 1/III; H. Focillon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1918), n. 762