Descrizione

PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista – Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo. Roma: 1764. [bound with, of the same author:] Descrizione e disegno dell’Emissario del Lago Albano. [Roma: 1762]. [bound with, of the same author:] Di due spelonche ornate dagli antichi alla riva del Lago Albano. [Roma: 1762].

Atlantic folio (550×400 mm.), 19th cent. half vellum binding with large corners, title in gold on later morocco label at spine, boards covered with marbled paper, a very fresh copy, printed on laid paper (light occasional foxing).

Antichità d’Albano: Half-title, engraved frontispiece, a very large, double-page architectural plate containing the dedicatory to Pope Clemens XIII, sponsor of Piranesi, a leaf with another (printed) dedicatory letter by Piranesi, pp. 26 of text, and 13 double-page engraved plates (of which one folding), and 14 single-page plates.
Descrizione … dell’Emissario del Lago Albano: engraved frontispiece, pp. 19 of text, (1 for ‘imprimatur’), and 8 double-page engraved plates (of which one folding), and 1 single-page plate.
Di due spelonche … alla riva del Lago Albano: First leaf with half-page engraved headpiece, pp. 9, (1 for ‘imprimatur’), 6 double-page engraved plates (of which one folding), and 6 single-page plates.

First edition of these three works, among the most significant and representative of Piranesi’s archaeological taste for the buildings and the public Works of the ancient Romans. A magnificent copy showing Piranesi’s etchings (including some of his ‘most dramatic vedute’ – Wilton-Ely, cit.) in fine, fresh impressions. Piranesi became fascinated with Lake Albano and here celebrates the monumental feat of ancient Roman engineering that it represented. At the end of the 4th century BCE, following an oracle predicting victory at Veii, the Romans lowered the level of the lake by boring a tunnel beneath what became Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence. Piranesi documents the ingenious construction with technical as well as dramatic depictions. In his researches into the tunnel, Piranesi came across two grottoes by the shore, which he depicts in ‘Di due spelonche’. Pope Clement XIII encouraged Piranesi to continue his investigation of the area surrounding Castel Gandolfo, and financially supported the publication of ‘Antichità d’Albano e di Castel Gandolfo’, which Piranesi dedicated to him. These three works, conceived in ‘support of his passionate belief in Roman originality (Wilton-Ely p.668), are often found bound together, indeed Focillon treats the third work as an appendix to the second.
Focillon pp. 315-318; Hind pp.85-86. Wilton-Ely 638-669, 613-24, 625-37.