Giovanni Battista Piranesi

"The engraver and designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi published this lively three-part defense of Roman architectural "invention" in 1765, just as the "beautiful and noble simplicity" of ancient Greek art was becoming a tenet of Western aesthetics. An impassioned plea for a Roman-Style eclecticism that draws freely on all artistic forms and traditions, Piranesi's Observations anticipates the contemporary debate between devotees of a rational, minimal architecture and advocates of an architecture rich in ornament and historical references."--BOOK JACKET.

The series of prints which is the subject of this essay was first given the rather formidable, and poorly spelled, Italian title "Invenzioni Capric di Carceri all Acqua Forte Datte in Luce da Giovani Buzard [somewhat later spelled correctly Bouchard] in Roma Mercant(e) al Corso" by their publisher, who was a Frenchman. This Dover edition, first published in 1973, reproduces in their entirety -- at 60 per cent of original size -- the first and second states of Invenzioni Capric di Carceri by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The first state, containing 14 etchings, was originally published in Rome, circa 1745. The second, containing 16 etchings, was originally issued in 1761. - Publisher.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building; its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house--a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth full of startling images of surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds. This description comes from the publisher.