Artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, October 4, 1720–November 9, 1778)
Artist Francesco Piranesi (Italian, ca, 1756–1810)
Title Side View of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum (Temple de Neptune à Pesto, vu de côté, et dessiné plus en grand qu'on ne le voit dans la première planche)
Plate Number Plate 11
Series Different Views of Paestum
Date 1778
Medium Etching on paper
Dimensions Image: 17 13/16 x 26 3/4 in. (45.2 x 67.9 cm)
Plate: 18 3/16 x 27 1/16 in. (46.2 x 68.7 cm)
Sheet: 22 1/4 x 31 5/8 in. (56.5 x 80.3 cm)
Credit Line Collection of Diether Thimme, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 98.278.9
About this Work
In 1777 Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his son, Francesco, traveled to the coast south of Naples to draw the famous Greek temples at Paestum. These three buildings, ranked along a marshy plain facing the sea, represented an austere classical tradition that predated the richness and variety of the Roman buildings that the elder Piranesi had studied so deeply. Years earlier, he had disparaged the importance of the Greek tradition in Roman architecture, but his encounter with these “grave” and “wise” buildings transformed his opinion.
In an impressive suite of twenty-one prints completed by Francesco shortly before his father’s death, Piranesi shaped the taste of the next generation of the classical revival, which would turn with respect to the more sober grandeur of the Greeks.
Piranesi stepped closer to the temple of Neptune for this depiction to get a view that was at once more intimate and more imposing. Cropping the building at the left and creating a rapid diagonal into space on the right, he added drama with the play of light, shadow, and vegetation on the stone.
The Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art has thirteen plates from this series(Eskenazi Museum of Art 98.278.1-.13) and the frontispiece (Eskenazi Museum of Art 98.277).
