Enfilade

From De Luca Editori d’Arte:

Clare Hornsby and Caroline Barron, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Etchings from the Research Collections of the British School at Rome (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2025), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-8865576403, €60.

This book presents some of the most significant objects in the Research Collections of the British School at Rome (BSR), gathered by the School’s first student and third Director, the archaeologist Thomas Ashby (1874–1931). Ashby bought a large number of early books and prints that now make up the basis of the Special Collections, including a substantial number—around 150—loose etched prints and several complete printed books made by the multi-talented artist, architect, and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Venice 1720–Rome 1778).

The etchings come from all stages of Piranesi’s career and reflect many aspects of his vast output. They have been the subject of exhibitions organised by the British School, in Rome and elsewhere, and they feature in online catalogues, but this book is the first produced by BSR to offer an analysis of a selection of the loose prints, 104 in total. The focus of the catalogue is the archaeological and topographical subject matter of the prints, as well as an examination of the text that accompanies them in the form of detailed labels and captions. Piranesi’s print output has become widely known in the last century or so and his name has come to be associated with drama, exaggeration, fantasy and even mystery. This book takes a close look at the prints and reveals a partial corrective to that view: Piranesi the antiquarian and archaeologist emerges as protagonist here, highlighting just one of the rich variety of responses to the ancient past that formed the cultural environment of Grand Tour Rome.

Clare Hornsby is an art and architectural historian and a Research Fellow at BSR. She has published on the Grand Tour, the antiquities market between Rome and London, and on eighteenth-century architecture. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma, and of the Scientific Committee of the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

Caroline Barron is an ancient historian who works on the cultural and historical significance of Latin epigraphy, from antiquity to the present day. A monograph on the collecting of Latin inscriptions in the eighteenth-century is forthcoming, and her current research project is on the history of epigraphic forgery. She is Assistant Professor in Classics (Roman History) in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Research Fellow at BSR.

This brief publication (in Italian) is available as a free PDF from De Luca Editori d’Arte; the English abstract is included below:

Sabina d’Inzillo Carranza de Cavi, Glama Ströberle tra Roma e Lisbona: Vieira, Benefial, Masucci e la pietra rossa (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2025), 31 pages, ISBN: 978-8865576502 (PDF file), free.

This essay, which thoroughly analyzes three notebooks now in the special collections of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, focuses on the graphic style of João Glama Ströberle, a Portuguese painter of German descent, a pupil of Vieira Lusitano, and a master of Vieira Portuense. His training in Rome from 1734 to 1741 with talented artists such as the non-conformist Marco Benefial and the Marattesque Agostino Masucci made him an important trait d’union between Italy and Portugal, where he contributed to the transfer of the principles of life drawing and academic draughtsmanship. The essay discusses the graphic techniques learned in Rome, paying particular attention to the use of red chalk in the 18th century, between Rome and Lisbon.