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'They despise my novelty and humble birth, I their cowardly conservatism': Architecture and politics in the plates of PiranesiU+2019s 'Parere su lU+2019architettura'

Boekbijdrage - Hoofdstuk

A well-known matter of contention in architectural history is the dispute between Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Pierre-Jean Mariette, as it was most scornfully expressed in PiranesiU+2019s twin publications 'Parere sullU+2019architettura' and 'Osservazioni... sopra la lettre de M. Mariette' (1765). To the Parere dialogue Piranesi later added a series of five plates, three of them prominently bearing classical quotes. These citations have never been read otherwise than as a mere contribution to this dispute on architecture, the role of invention and the tyranny of aesthetical theories. However, an investigation into the larger context of the classical texts from which they originate, and the significance of these quotes for a mid-eighteenth-century reader, may offer an additional layer of meaning. Following eighteenth-century changes in the role of classical erudition, Piranesi is revising his use of classical quotations: with the Parere quotations their purpose seems to shift, from delivering the basis of historical truth to a rhetorical device for criticizing present conditions and believes. With these quotations Piranesi, as I will argue, is not only defending himself against harsh, particularly French, criticism in architectural matters, but also firmly raising his profile in a much larger, political controversy. Concentrating on the Terence, Ovid and Sallust quotes in the plates of the Parere, this paper demonstrates how behind the aesthetic and theoretical agenda of the plates, and their quotes, emerges an implicit political one that is no less antagonistic. For Piranesi, the Roman Republic offers not only an architectural but also an ideological model. Its heroic and magnificent past provides models and elements for a new architecture as well as for a new, republican, society.
Boek: Aspects of Piranesi : essays on history, criticism and invention
Pagina's: 10 - 53
ISBN:9789076714462
Jaar van publicatie:2015
Toegankelijkheid:Closed