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Giovanni Battista Piranesi, also called Giambattista Piranesi (1720-78), was an important Italian draftsman, printmaker, architect, and art theorist. His large prints depicting the buildings of classical and postclassical Rome and its vicinity contributed considerably to Rome's fame and to the growth of classical archaeology and to the Neoclassical movement in art.
This print is a souvenir of Rome, which was an essential stop on the European ‘grand tour’, then in its relatively early years and at the height of its fashion. The tour acted as a cultural finishing school for upper-class young men, mostly English, throughout the 18th century and beyond. Grand tourists absorbed the Continent’s classical and Renaissance art, architecture and music, mingled with Europe’s elite, and learned new languages. In the process, there was often space for wine, women and song.
Evocative prints, such as this bustling scene, would be displayed in the returned traveller’s home - quite likely a London mansion or country house - to communicate his worldliness and prestige.
What exactly does this impressive etching depict? The theme is all the more poignant when we learn the answer, adding another layer of vanished Rome to Piranesi's own powerful reclamation of the same subject. The Porto di Ripetta was a port in the city of Rome. It was situated on the banks of the River Tiber and was designed and built in 1704 by the Italian Baroque architect Alessandro Specchi. Located in front of the church of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni, its low walls with steps descended in sweeping scenographic curves from the street to the river. The port no longer exists but is known from engraved views, drawings and early photographs, Piranesi's print being surely the most famous.
Situated on the left bank of the Tiber (as facing south), this was the place to alight for those coming downriver; the Porto di Ripa Grande on the other bank in Trastevere served those coming up from the seaward side of the city.
During the second half of the 19th century, the river banks and roads along the Tiber were radically reconstructed to improve the city's flooding defences and its transport connections. The new road on the left bank is called Lungotevere. In the area of the Porto di Ripetta, an iron bridge was constructed between 1877-1879 across the Tiber and adjacent to the port. This in turn led to the construction of another more substantial bridge, the Ponte Cavour, which was opened in 1901, and the Porto di Ripetta was demolished.
See:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 'Giovanni Battista Piranesi', https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Battista-Piranesi
Wikipedia, 'Porto di Ripetta', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_di_Ripetta
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018