Subject
View of the Via Appia Antica, from the series “Le Antichità Romane”
Accession number RP-P-OB-36.857
Engraving
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Mogliano Veneto 1720 – 1778 Rome
ca. 1756 – ca. 1757
35.1 cm x 24.1 cm
Inscriptions
Top right: (initial part illegible) VII. Bottom: View of the ancient Via Appia, which passes beneath the walls already described in previous plates by Ustrino, today covered in the ruins of the same. A. Bed of the ground well de-sodded, and beaten with poles, before spreading the coarse fill one palm high in the likeness of a slab composed of pozzolan lime, and chips of flint stones, and over it forcibly planted the flint paving stones B. cut in the reverse to a diamond point. C. Other stones placed in the manner of Wedges, which tighten and handily enclose the aforesaid stones, which pave the Way already mentioned, among which at every 30. palms comes one D. more eminent and higher than the others of such making, which perhaps was to serve those, who mounted, and dismounted from horses, and of rest for Travellers. This and the lower others are planted above a large filling wall of similar stone chips, but larger than those mentioned above. Below right: Piranesi Archit. dis. 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. 479.
