[.ca] Piranesi: The Etchings (ISBN 3822850942)

The Definitive catalogue raisonne of Piranesi:
Despite the minimal written information, translated from Italian into both English and German, this very generous book does indeed live up to its title of The Complete Etchings. Giovanni Battista Piranesi lived and worked in the mid 18th century, dreaming of architecturally recreating Ancient Rome. Thwarted from his grandiose dreams by practical matters of living, he found a viable outlet for communicating at least his visions by means of making some of the finest etchings the printing world has known. Concepts he could not translate into edifices became grand, eloquent and very personal prints which even today influence artists and stage designers, so atmospheric and rich are the renderings. Piranesi thought on the grand scale, and these many etchings demonstrate how his sense of space, of dark interiors with penetrating shafts of light, of temples, of prisons and prisoners, and even details of architectural elements of decor could become fine art. Though the amount of information about the man as written here is minimal, I doubt that there was much more to this man's biography, so absorbed he was with markings on copper plates. But the lack of biographical data is more than compensated for in the accompanying information on the pages with each etching. This is a fine addition to the libraries of artists, printmakers, architects, and yes, Dreamers! Well worth the price.

DON'T BOTHER:
This book may have all of Piranesi's work, but the pictures are ridiculously small. I returned it the day it came in the mail.