Subject
View of a tomb on Via Appia Antica, outside Porta San Sebastiano, with accompanying plan and description, from the series “Le Antichità Romane”.
Accession number RP-P-OB-39.505
Etching
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Mogliano Veneto 1720 – 1778 Rome
Around 1756 – 1757
39.4 cm x 52.0 cm
Inscriptions
Top left: Tom. III. Top centre: Scale in Roman Palms. Top right: IX. Bottom: A Plan of a Sepulchre outside Porta San Sebastiano on the ancient Via Appia in the Vigna Buonamici beyond Capo di Bove. B Entrance made by Modern persons. C Windows. D Courses of Tuff at front of the construction. E Elevation of the aforementioned plan, built of reticulated Walls. F Courses of Tiles. G Current level of the ground. H Courses of Tuff, in good part buried. I Section with Niches, the concave of which protrude outside the circumference of the Wall. K Lower underground level. L Part of the Walls shown in larger form. M Courses of the aforesaid Tuffs shown in larger form. The heads of them bound by means of oak Pins cut in dovetail, and by the finest Lime, so much that they unite, that one can hardly discover the connection. N One of the said oak Pins. O One of the Pieces of Tuff with the Fitment at the heads by the Pins, and with Channel, by which the Lime inserted into the connection. Some of the Ancients, reflecting perhaps on the vicissitudes of human affairs so often caused by the revolutions of the centuries, as they saw happen to the most powerful Nations, thought to make their Ashes safer by deposing them, rather than in superb Mausoleums, within abject Sepulchres, or by hiding them within rough Stones, and Boulders, and in places, where no one would ever have imagined such things could be contained there. Who could deny, therefore, that this and other abjectly constructed sepulchres could not be of qualified Personages. Below right: Piranesi Archit. dis. et inc.
Placement
Rijksmuseum
Credits
Rijksmuseum
References
H. Focillon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi; a cura di Maurizio Calvesi e Augusta Monferini; traduzione di Giuseppe Guglielmi, Bologna, 1967, p. 306.
J. Wilton-Ely, Giovanni Battista Piranesi: the complete etchings, 2 voll., San Francisco, Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 1994, p. 481.