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.