View of the Flavian Amphitheater, Called the Colosseum (Veduta dell'Anfiteatro Flavio, detto il Colosseo)

Date1761

MediumEtching

Credit LineArt History Department Fund

DimensionsMat: 28 × 40 in. (71.1 × 101.6 cm) Maximum: 15 15/16 × 26 15/16 in. (40.5 × 68.5 cm) Sheet: 22 1/2 × 31 1/8 in. (57.2 × 79.1 cm) Image: 17 1/4 × 27 1/2 in. (43.8 × 69.9 cm)

Object number1997.006

Label TextWhen Piranesi first came to Rome from Venice in 1740, he entered the studio of Giuseppe Vasi, the foremost engraver of city views, or vedute, in Rome. In Vasi’s workshop, Piranesi learned quickly, and made significant advances in his etching technique. By the late 1740s, he was making the large-scale vedute that he is most famous for today. Over the course of thirty years, from around 1748 until his death in 1778, Piranesi produced a series of 135 prints called the Vedute di Roma. Though these views of ancient and modern Roman buildings were sold as individual sheets to scholars, tourists, and artists to serve as souvenirs of their travels, surviving puncture marks suggest that they were often bound together with other prints in album form.

Piranesi produced several large vedute of the ancient amphitheater known as the Colosseum, including this print from the early 1760s. Here, the artist renders a bulging closeup of the northern outer wall in a distorted perspective that emphasizes the monument’s massive volume. In spite of this dramatic treatment, the structure and its details, including the orders of the columns that flank the arches on each level (Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, with Corinthian pilasters on the upper or attic story), are clearly legible. The patches of vegetation that grow on the surface of the monument and hang from its archways emphasize its status as an ancient ruin.
Exhibition HistoryThe Art of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Michael C. Carlos Museum, November 8, 1997 - January 4, 1998
Art History 102 Works on Paper Study Gallery Exhibition, Michael C. Carlos Museum, February 14 - May 17, 1998
Recent Acquisitions of Old Masters: Durer to Delacroix, Michael C. Carlos Museum, October 6, 2001 - January 28, 2002
Discovering Rome: Maps and Monuments of the Eternal City, Michael C. Carlos Museum, September 16, 2006 - January 14, 2007
Old Masters: Highlights of the Works on Paper Collection, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 15 - December 6, 2009
Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome, Michael C. Carlos Museum, August 24 - November 17, 2013
Piranesi's Pages: Rome in Books and Prints, 1756-1776, Michael C. Carlos Museum, February 13 - April 4, 2021
The Eye, The Mind, and the Heart: In Honor of Clark Poling, Michael C. Carlos Museum, January 15 - March 5, 2022
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, September - November, 2009.
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2011), 141.
Antichita, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance & Baroque Images of Rome (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2013), 58 (checklist only).

ProvenanceWith James Lamantia [Gallery 539], New Orleans, Louisiana, purchased from Alberto di Castro [Antichita e graphica antica], Rome, Italy, March 6, 1996. Purchased for MCCM by Emory University Art History Department from Gallery 539.

Catalogue raisonnéFocillon 758, Hind 57

Status

Not on view

Collections