Frontispiece with Statue of Minerva Amidst Ruins

Inscriptions

Signed, in plate, lower right: Piranesi invento: incise in Roma; Inscribed in plate, lower right (on sarcophagus end) : PIRANESI INVI. INCI. ; Watermark: fleur-de-lis in circle [Hind 1]

Label

The printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi created many images of ancient Rome, which he imagined in various states of ruin and picturesque decay. In this image, Piranesi does not capture a real scene of ancient Rome but instead combines familiar sculptural elements—columns, archways, statues, and reliefs—to suggest the wealth of sculpture surviving from Antiquity. For Europeans both in Rome and throughout the continent, such sculpture offered a tangible link to the past. Surviving sculpture—whether statues like the Minerva at the center or the disembodied foot at the lower right—made the past present as a continuing source of wonder and inspiration.

From the 2024 exhibition Living with Sculpture: Presence and Power in Europe, 1400–1750, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art, and Ashley B. Offill, Curator of Collections

Course History

History 42.01, Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies 22.01, Gender & European Society, Patrick Meehan, Spring 2024

History 96.39, Saints and Relics, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Spring 2024

Italian 1.01, Introductory Italian I, Noemi Perego, Spring 2024

Italian 11.01, Intensive Italian, Floriana Ciniglia, Spring 2024

Italian 2.01, Introductory Italian II, Floriana Ciniglia, Spring 2024

Italian 3.01, Introductory Italian III, Tania Convertini, Spring 2024

Italian 3.02, Introductory Italian III, Giorgio Alberti, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

Living with Sculpture: Presence and Power in Europe, 1400–1750, Citrin Family Gallery and Engles Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 23, 2024–March 22, 2025.

Piranesi at Dartmouth: Etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the Dartmouth College Collections, Beaumont-May Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 4-August 22, 1976.

Publication History

L. Nichols, Piranesi at Dartmouth: Etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the Dartmouth College Collections, Hanover, NH: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1976, p. 70, no. 97.

Published References

Andrew Robison, Piranesi-Early Architectural Fantasies: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Etchings, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986, 2 A/G. ; Edgar Peters Bowron and Joseph J. Rishel, Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000, p. 578, no. 422.: Nicholas Penny, Piranesi, London: Oresko Books Ltd., 1978, p. 36, no. 17.

Catalogue Raisonne

Focillon 786; Hind 2 i/vii

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