Catalogs Piranesi's numerous designs for buildings and furnishings as well as his rare figure studies

Product Description: Published in 1765, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Osservazioni is an impassioned defense of the superiority of Roman architectural "invention" over the "beautiful and noble simplicity" of ancient Greece. In this three-part polemical masterpiece, the famed engraver and designer not only contends that the Etruscans-not the Greeks-were the artistic mentors of the Romans but also argues for a Roman-inspired exuberance in design that draws freely on all forms and traditions of ancient art...read more

Reproduces both the first and second editions of the eighteenth-century Italian artist's prison etchings, revealing his architectural talents and the cruelty of prison life

Reproductions of outstanding architectural etchings by the renowned eighteenth-century Italian architect and contemporary photographs of the same monuments reveal changes that time has and has not produced in Rome