View of the Grand Cascade at Tivoli, from Views of Rome
Medium
Etching on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 47.1 × 70.2 cm (18 9/16 × 27 11/16 in.); Sheet: 50.5 × 72 cm (19 15/16 × 28 3/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
48064
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Giovanni Battista Piranesi had supplied decades of tourists with his massive, masterly etchings of architectural monuments in Rome and its environs by the time he completed his Views of Rome series in the late 1770s. The waterfall pictured here, in the ancient town of Tivoli, was a natural wonder, and the 16th-century Villa d’Este nearby channeled the same waterpower into a flamboyantly artificial series of fountains, automata (mechanical toys moved by water), and strategic cascades. Both were m...
About the Artist
Giovanni Battista Piranesi · 1720–1778
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was an Italian printmaker, architect, and antiquarian whose visionary etchings of Rome and imaginary prisons revolutionized architectural representation and profoundly influenced both Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Piranesi stands as one of the most important printmakers of the eighteenth century, fundamentally shaping European perceptions of ancient Rome an...