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The son of a stonemason and builder, Giovanni Battista Piranesi was educated as an architect in Venice under his maternal uncle Matteo Lucchesi, who worked on Venice's harbors and breakwaters as a waterworks engineer. From the tradition of Italian theatre design, Piranesi learned techniques of dramatic perspective and lighting. Ferdinando Bibiena, the celebrated stage designer and set painter, has been mentioned as one of his early teachers, presumably in Bologna before Piranesi left for Rome. Even if this personal contact did not occur, the influence of Bibiena publications on Piranesi is undeniable.
In 1740 Piranesi left Venice for Rome, there he worked in the shops of the scene-painters Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriani and then studied under Giuseppe Vasi, who introduced him to the art of etching and engraving. In the same years in which Rome was becoming the main destination of the 'Grand Tour' in Europe, it was also a meeting place of the leading exponents of a movement of reform in the arts

From 1743 to 1747 Piranesi sojourned mainly in Venice. He then returned to Rome, where he opened a workshop in Via del Corso, serving as publisher and salesman for his own prints. Piranesi was a rapid and facile worker and his output in etched plates was enormous: large prints, full of detail, vigour, and brilliancy. The genre of view painting, on which Piranesi based his work, gave him the means to elaborate and develop an original manner of seeing and documenting the past. While he achieved a work of magnitude in pictorial records of Roman monuments of antiquity and of the Renaissance, and gave immense archæological, antiquarian, and topographical value to this work, the artistic quality always predominates
As a rule Piranesi drew directly on copper, and hence his work is bold, free, and spirited to a marked degree. His highly original etching technique produces rich textures and bold contrasts of light and shadow by means of intricate, repeated bitings of the copperplate. His unparalleled accuracy of depiction, his personal expression of the structures' dramatic and romantic grandeur, and his technical mastery made these prints some of the most original and impressive representations of architecture to be found in Western art.

The four large, horizontal plates Piranesi called the 'Grotteschi' are an outstanding example of 'Capricci', the term that came in use in the 18th century to describe the fantasy assemblages of classic antiquities. The 'Grotteschi', etched in 1747-1748, have long been considered Piranesi's most Venetian prints, and they are frequently cited as showing the influence of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's etchings on Piranesi. Evidence of this influence is found in their vibrancy of light, freedom of hatching, romantic or exotic mood, and their subjects, which include ancient objects and architectural ornaments connected with snakes and bones and other features of time and decay. While some definite reflections of Tiepolo's 'Scherzi' can be seen in the 'Grotteschi', those etchings were not the sole or even the most dominant artistic influence on Piranesi's series. Elements in Neapolitan art (much probably Piranesi travelled south between 1743 and 1744.) as well as the excitement about antique objects then being unearthed at Herculaneum were even more influential than Tiepolo on the style and contents of the new series. In the romantic flavour of the 'Grotteschi' there is much of the spirit of Salvator Rosa: their 'vanitas' elements, reveal a strong influence of Rosa's etching 'Democritus' (1662), a visual meditation on death suggested by jumbled piles of assorted objects.

GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI, The Four Grotteschi: The Skeletons, The Triumphal Arch, The Tomb of Nero, The Monumental Tablet, Etchings (with engraving, drypoint, scratching and burnishing), Robison 21, 22, 23, 24. Second Edition, Fifth Issue (early 1770s). In very good condition. Private Collection.

The 'Grotteschi' was thought to have been first published in 1750 in Bouchard's collection of Piranesi's etchings, the 'Opere Varie di Architettura', but Dr. Andrew Robison pointed out that they appeared as a separate work c. 1747-49. The series presented here, printed during Piranesi's lifetime, was originally in a volume with other prints by the artist. It's a fifth issue of the second edition (early 1770s).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. M. Hind, 'Giovanni Battista Piranesi, a Critical Study: with a List of His Published Works and Detailed Catalogues of the Prisons and the View of Rome', New York, 1922; A. Robinson, 'Piranesi Early Architectual Fantasies: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings ', Washington, 1986.