Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Campidoglio antico a cui si ascendeva per circa cento gradini ... (The ancient Capitol ascended by approximately one hundred steps ...)
Artwork Detail
It was at Rome, on October 15th, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
(Edward Gibbon, Autobiography, 1796)
Piranesi imagines the Capitol in its heyday. A great flight of steps leads up the hill, dotted with columns, trophies and other spoils of ancient military triumphs, in amongst lines of statues of senators.
- Title
- Campidoglio antico a cui si ascendeva per circa cento gradini ... (The ancient Capitol ascended by approximately one hundred steps ...)
- Artist/creator
- Production date
- circa 1743
- Medium
- etching
- Dimensions
- 267 x 357 mm
- Credit line
- Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, bequest of Dr Walter Auburn, 1982
- Accession no
- M1982/1/4/7
- Other ID
- 016 Auburn Catalogue
- Copyright
- No known copyright restrictions
- Department
- International Art
- Display status
- Not on display
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