Produced with the tourist market in mind, these iconic images of exaggeratedly scaled buildings remain important documents of the mid-18th-century Roman urban landscape.Īlthough mainly known as a printmaker,with over a thousand print designs produced during his 40-year career, Piranesi was also an original draftsman. ![]() The Art Institute has complete sets of both editions.įirst appearing in the 1740s, Piranesi’s Vedute di Roma ( Views of Rome), a series of 135 prints published over the course of more than 30 years, revolutionized the way in which both ancient monuments and the modern cityscape of Rome were depicted. After printing a first edition around 1749–50, Piranesi thoroughly reworked the plates for a second edition in 1761, making all the designs more ominous and adding two new compositions. In this series of 14 large etchings Piranesi used his knowledge of Roman architecture and stage design to create cavernous vaulted interiors populated by diminutive figures, labyrinthine staircases and balustrades, and eerie machinery. After a few visits to Venice in the 1740s,during which he probably met the influential painter and etcher Giambattista Tiepolo, he permanently settled in Rome, where he published his most well-known work: the Carceri ( Imaginary Prisons). Trained in Venice in architecture and engineering, Piranesi was a pioneer in archaeology, and through the wide dissemination of his prints, he became one of the most influential architects, designers, and printmakers of the 18th century.Īfter moving to Rome at the age of 20, Piranesi established professional links with the artist Giovanni Paolo Panini and the architect and surveyor Giambattista Nolli. ![]() Coleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), lxviii.The Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi is best known for his numerous etchings depicting the monuments of ancient and modern Rome. Valerii Martialis Liber Spectaculorum, trans. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 311.ġ9 Kathleen M. Quenemoen, eds., A Companion to Roman Architecture (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 290.Ĥ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.Ħ Amanda Claridge, Judith Toms, and Tony Cubberley, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 314.ħ Claridge, Toms, and Cubberley, Rome, 314.Ĩ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 295-96.ĩ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 290.ġ4 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 295.ġ6 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.ġ7 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.ġ8 Cassius Dio Cocceianus, "Book 66," in Historia Romana, trans. 20ġ Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 36-37.Ģ Filippo Coarelli, The Colosseum (Los Angeles: J Paul Getty Museum, 2001), 28.ģ Roger Ulrich and Caroline K. A series of lift systems and trapdoors provided dramatic and unexpected entrances for gladiators and animals into the arena. ![]() 19 The hypogeum was divided into chambers and tunnels that were used for various purposes including storing scenery and props. 18 If this is so, then the deeper, more intricately divided hypogeum that is visible today was built later, many believe by Domitian. Many scholars believe that the substructures beneath the arena, the hypogeum, were much simpler when first built, 17 based on the account of Cassius Dio, a Roman historian, that states that "Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water". 13ĭigital rendering from Rome Reborn depicting the elevators of the Colosseum's "hypogeum" substructures. 9 From the time when spectators entered the arena, 10 to the corridors they could take to their seats, 11 to the seats themselves, 12 spectators were filtered based on their social status. Spectators were not free to walk anywhere they wanted, but were carefully funneled throughout the structure based on their social status. This segregation was so complete that the corridor systems made it impossible for Senators and Equestrians to run into each other, and it was possible for plebs only to meet other plebs. 8 The vaulting within the arena was crucial not only for the structural integrity of the building, but also to provide easy access and free circulation for spectators. 7 Spectators were seated based upon their social status, with the most elite viewers closest to the arena, and the lower class citizens higher up. Contemporary estimates claimed the Colosseum could seat up to 87,000 people, 6 though modern, more conservative estimates put that number closer to 50,000 people. Within the Colosseum, those four levels that are visible from outside provide huge amounts of spectator seating. ![]() Giacomo Lauro Colosseum cutaway diagram revealing the interior passages and seating, from Splendore dell'antica e moderna Roma (Rome, 1641).
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