untitled (the tomb of Nero)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, artist

1720–1778

untitled (the tomb of Nero), 1747

Portfolio/Series title: Grotteschi

Where object was made: Italy

Material/technique: etching

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 387 x 543 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 15 1/4 x 21 3/8 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 510 x 687 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 20 1/16 x 27 1/16 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 24 x 32 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Letha Churchill Walker Memorial Art Fund

Accession number: 2008.0315

Not on display

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Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Empire of Things," 2013, Kate Meyer
These four prints give a sense of the broad range of Piranesi’s antiquarian interests. Piranesi’s training as an architect informed his ideas about antiquity, which take the form of meditative fantasies (as in the Tomb of Nero, also known as Fantastic Landscape with a Stranded Dolphin), designs for objects that emulate Roman design (Design for a Chimneypiece and a Table), and careful renderings of the ruins and remnants of Roman buildings and inscriptions that remain useful to present-day archeologists (Capitoline Inscriptions and Plan of the Campus Martius). Through his careful documentation of ancient Roman architectural remains-“these speaking ruins,” as Piranesi once described them-he participated in the “Graeco-Roman debate,” arguing forcefully in his texts and polemical works (such as Capitoline Inscriptions and Plan of the Campus Martius) for the superiority of the eclectic Roman style in contradistinction to the “noble simplicity” of ancient Greek design and architecture.