Vaults & Ruins

What remained of ancient Rome when young Giovanni Battista Piranesi came down from Venice in 1740, was a pretty depressing sight for a would-be architect. The Forum was a clutter of shattered columns commonly known as "Cows' Field." The once-glorious Capitol was "Goats' Hill." The arcades of,the Colosseum were smothered in weeds and shrubs, and every day a few more stones disappeared on the carts of enterprising masons.

Romans were busy converting their palazzi into flats for tourists; there were no commissions for an unfledged architetto veneziano. But if Piranesi couldn't build new.buildings, he decided, he would draw the old ones before they disappeared entirely.

He went to work with a will, learned the trade of the artist-engraver, bullied his master into revealing a few closely guarded technical tricks by threatening to murder him. Soon he was turning out the first of the 1,300-odd plates which by mid-18th Century had made him famous.

Last week Manhattan gallerygoers could see some of the irascible Italian's best work. Centered around the collection of his sketches and drawings belonging to the late Mrs. J. P. Morgan, the exhibit included some of the decorative drawings which influenced English Architect-Decorator Robert Adam. Sharp-eyed observers could see details familiar, in the work of Furniture Designers Chippendale and Sheraton, Potter Josiah Wedgwood. Tangled in some of his lush and complicated grotesques were prototypes of the obelisks, griffins and clawed pedestals which sat so heavily in French drawing rooms of the First Empire. In the towering fagades and cavernous interiors were patterns for many an American municipal building, railway station, temple of industry and commerce.

High spot of the show were twelve of the 16 famous drawings of imaginary carceri" (prisons). Tiny tattered figures cowered beneath enormous vaults and arches; huge spiked wheels ground inexorably; stairs spiraled up the dank walls to nowhere. In a world where nightmare prisons and melancholy ruins were once more an appalling reality, Piranesi's treatment of them hit as hard as ever.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.