![]() Usually the female has wings, while the males have dragon-like spiked backs. Sometimes it is represented with a long snake for a tail. The head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. The imagery of Classical narrative, filtered through various Renaissance appropriations, gave him a vast reserve of raw material. Mythical creatures Sphinxes, harpies, fauns, griffins and other mythical creatures abound in Piranesi’s imagination. His early work Prima Parte di Architetture, e Prospettive, influenced by Bibiena’s theatrical designs, contains prints depicting small figures wandering in a stage set where everything is on a vast scale: buildings, fountains, monuments and vases dwarf the individual in an awe-inspiring fictional representation of the Classical ideal. Piranesi embraced the theatricality of the Classical imagination from the start of his career. 15 The scale of many of these objects is still surprising: a two-metre-high candelabrum, and vases with no function other than to inspire awe. However, as John Wilton-Ely observes, “when Gustav III of Sweden made a belated Grand Tour in 1783 he visited Palazzo Tomati and purchased from Francesco, Piranesi’s son, a large part of the remaining antiquities, especially those works which were too fanciful or bizarre for earlier clients and these are now in Stockholm”. On Piranesi’s death a complete room-by-room inventory of the palace was compiled, but the list is not sufficiently detailed to identify all the restored antiquities. The visitors were a roll-call of leading patrons on the Grand Tour from 1761 onwards, including Sir William Hamilton, Sir Roger Newdigate and Charles Townley. ![]() Palazzo Tomati still exists but nothing remains of any significance in the interiors where Piranesi had his printing business and “museum”. Many of the sculptors working with him were highly skilled in patinating new marble to integrate it with antique material,14 which was necessary to satisfy the aesthetic demands of potential clients. He worked with a network of talented sculptors including Antoine-Guillaume Grandjacquet, Francesco Antonio Franzoni and Lorenzo Cardelli, who could realise his sketchy designs in three dimensions and help reconstruct antiquities. 13 Piranesi’s business was carried out from Palazzo Tomati in Via Sistina, conveniently near the British Quarter of the Piazza di Spagna. ![]() The extent to which he was interested in improving and reconstructing the fragments that were being discovered is clearly revealed in Sir William Hamilton’s remark about the Warwick vase: I was obliged to cut a block of marble at Carrara to repair it, which has been hollowed out & the fragments fixed on it, by which means the vase is as firm & entire as the day it was made. Piranesi, deeply engaged in the process of learning from and understanding the antique creative mind, viewed originality as a process rather than a state of being. ![]() The protocols that governed “restoration” were very flexible. Piranesi was recognised and valued by these British dealers for his expertise, and in 1757 he had been made an honorary member of the newly formed London Society of Antiquaries. He worked in close collaboration with entrepreneurs such as Thomas Jenkins, James Byers and Gavin Hamilton. When he started losing the patronage of the Rezzonico family, especially after the death of Pope Clement XIII in 1769, he was more reliant on this work to supplement his business selling prints. Piranesi was increasingly making and selling work from the 1760s onwards. This was partially modelled in ZBrush from a scan of the seeds of a pomegranate Detail of the fluting on the neck of the vase 206 207 Vase with three griffin heads From Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti antichi disegnati ed incisi dal cavalier Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Rome, 1778) Wilton-Ely 951 Digitally modelled using ZBrush by Adam Lowe with Voxelstudios, Madrid 3D realisation using a stereo-lithographic printer by Materialise, Leuven Cast in plaster (Alamo 70) by Ángel Jorquera, Javier Barreno and Juan Carlos Andrés Arias, Factum Arte, Madrid The size of this vase is based on another large marble vase reproduced in Vasi, candelabri, cippi now in front of the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere (Wilton-Ely 922) 220 x 160 x 160 cm 2010 In Rome in the late eighteenth century there was a thriving trade in restoring and selling Classical antiquities to visiting foreigners. Detail of the pomegranate that forms the handle of the lid of the large vase.
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