Our Notes & References

First edition of this superb work of ornamentation: the Tsar’s magnificent copy, well preserved in its original binding by the Salvioni bindery at Rome. It is complete with all its required 73 engravings and bears the seal of the Tsar’s library in Tsarskoe Selo. It is likely that Tsarevich Paul Petrovich I (1754-1801) acquired it during his excursion to Rome in 1782 together with his wife Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg (1759-1828). This copy was part of a series of major sales organized by the Soviet state in the 1930s.

Published at the height of Piranesi’s career as an engraver, these impressive decorations celebrate the influence of Etruscan and Egyptian art on classical Graeco-Roman art. The work is dedicated to Cardinal Giambattista Rezzonico, one of Piranesi’s patrons.

“This work appeared at the end of the most significant and productive decade in Piranesi’s career, in terms of both theory and practice. It appropriately brings together a considered statement of his radical aesthetic, first voice in the Parere su l’Architettura, and an impressive corpus of design ostensibly executed according to his theoretical standpoint. Equally appositely the book is dedicated tone of the most sympathetic patrons, Cardinal Giambattista Rezzonico, and is addressed to an international audience of patrons and designers through parallel texts in Italian, French and English… [In the 1764-1765] Piranesi undertook various schemes of interior decorations, often involving furniture, for the Pope at Castel Gandolfo, for the Cardinal at the Lateran and for Senator Abbondio Rezzonico at the Palazzo Senatorio. In this period the artist designed the painted decorations in the Egyptian style for the Caffè degli Inglesi in the Piazza di Spagna and also devised several ornamental chimneypieces, ingeniously incorporating antique fragments, for various foreign clients. The architectural commissions apart, most of these achievements ae represented among the group of 67 plates in the Diverse Maniere. These images illustrate the text expounding bis philosophy of design, which opens the book…. Piranesi’s criteria are essentially visual rather than literary, and he aired some extremely original ideas on the stylization of natural forms in antiquity. The plates which follow are intended to point out these observations, and Piranesi is anxious to point out that he has given a particular prominence to the chimneypiece. The 61 chimneypiece designs illustrated range from relatively restrained essays, such as those already created for the Earl of Exeter, John Hope and Senator Rezzonico to highly involved confections combining Roman and Etruscan motifs… Notable both in the Essay and in the plates is the unprecedented attention given to Egyptian style, which is represented by 11 chimneypieces and illustrations of two walls from the Caffè degli Inglesi… The preparation of the Diverse Maniere, like that of other publication among Piranesi’s more ambitious works, appears to have covered several years, and the sequence of plates frequently varies from copy to copy” (Wilton-Ely).

Other provenance: Hans Marcus (bookseller at Cologne) – Private collection.

Bibliography

Hind, p. 86 ; Wilton-Ely, II, nos. 815-887 ; Ficacci, nos. 629-699 ; Kat. Berlin, 3820.