- Museum number
- 1908,0616.30
- Description
-
An atrium with Doric columns
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over traces of black chalk
Verso: A ground plan for a church
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1742-1743
- Dimensions
-
Height: 160 millimetres
-
Width: 214 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- As Andrew Robison first noted, this is a preliminary study for plate 12 of the first edition of the 'Prima Parte' issued in 1743 (J. Wilton-Ely, 'Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the complete etchings', San Francisco, 1994, I, no. 15, p. 34). In contrast to 1908-6-16-28 (the other BM 'Prima Parte' study) this appears to have been drawn specifically for the print. Piranesi began with a few chalk lines, and then started in pen to describe an atrium of Doric columns raised on a platform of two steps. Before the next stage of adding the wash he decided that only two panels of the ceiling should be visible, making this alteration clear by the horizontal line and the absence of wash above this point. He had thought of having three columns in the right foreground but changed his mind, roughly crossing out the nearmost one and adding a vertical line to the left of it to show where the composition ended. The related print is in the same direction as the drawing, and differs from it in the addition of some statues in the foreground area and making the building in the background another Doric atrium. The groundplan on the verso may well relate, as Croft-Murray suggested in the 1968 catalogue, to the building shown on the recto.
HC
Lit.: E. Croft-Murray, in exhib. cat., BM, 'Giovanni Battista Piranesi', 1968, no. 145; A. Robison, 'Preliminary Drawings for Piranesi's Early Architectural Fantasies', "Master Drawings", XV, 1977, 4, pp. 395-6, fig. 10; A. Robison, 'Piranesi: early architectural fantasies, a catalogue raisonné of the etchings', Chicago and London, 1986, p. 19, fig. 21, and under no. 13
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1968 BM, 'Piranesi', no. 28
1978 Jun-Oct, NG Washington, 'Piranesi'.
2020 20 Feb-9 Aug, London, BM, 'Piranesi drawings'.
- Acquisition date
- 1908
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1908,0616.30
