G.B. Piranesi, Campo Marzio dell'Antica Roma

One of the most famous of the archaeological works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Campo Marzio or Campus Martius (the volume normally has both Latin and Italian title pages and parallel text), was published in Rome in 1762.

This Highlight, presenting Thomas Ashby’s copy of the book in the BSR Library’s Rare Books Collection will enable online study of each page of the book which includes the magnificent Ichnographia – the plan of the Campo Marzio area of Rome based on Piranesi’s classical and archaeological researches and stimulated by his fervent creative imagination.

The aim of this Highlight, created in honour of the 300th anniversary year of his birth in Venice in 1720, is to present “the whole book” – not abstracting his printed images from their surrounding textual context and to focus on some of the unusual features of the BSR copy.

Some of the 300th anniversary events were re-scheduled to take place in 2021, including a conference for which the BSR partnered with the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the Villa Médicis Académie de France à Rome, organised by BSR Research Fellow Clare Hornsby and Professor Mario Bevilacqua, professor of Architecture at the University of Florence and Director of the Centro Studi.

One of the most famous of the archaeological works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the Campo Marzio or Campus Martius (the volume normally has both Latin and Italian title pages and parallel text), was published in Rome in 1762.

This Highlight, presenting Thomas Ashby’s copy of the book in the BSR Library’s Rare Books Collection will enable online study of each page of the book which includes the magnificent Ichnographia – the plan of the Campo Marzio area of Rome based on Piranesi’s classical and archaeological researches and stimulated by his fervent creative imagination.

The aim of this Highlight, created in honour of the 300th anniversary year of his birth in Venice in 1720, is to present “the whole book” – not abstracting his printed images from their surrounding textual context and to focus on some of the unusual features of the BSR copy.

Some of the 300th anniversary events were re-scheduled to take place in 2021, including a conference for which the BSR partnered with the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the Villa Médicis Académie de France à Rome, organised by BSR Research Fellow Clare Hornsby and Professor Mario Bevilacqua, professor of Architecture at the University of Florence and Director of the Centro Studi.