PIRANESI Giovanni Battista Diverse Maniere d’adornare i Cammini / Divers Manners of Ornamenting / Chimneys / Différentes manières d’orner les cheminées.

Hind, p. 86 ; Wilton-Ely, II, nos. 815-887 ; Ficacci, nos. 629-699 ; Kat. Berlin, 3820.

Édition originale de ce somptueux ouvrage d’ornementation. 

Il est dédié au cardinal Giambattista Rezzonico, l’un des mécènes de Piranesi. Édition publiée à l’apogée de l’art du graveur Piranesi, l’artiste y célèbre les influences de l’art étrusque et de l’art égyptienne sur l’art classique graeco-romain. 

« This work appeared at the end of the most significant and productive decade in Piranesi’s career, in terms of both theory and practice. It appropriately brings together a considered statement of his radical aesthetic, first voice in the Parere su l’Architettura, and an impressive corpus of design ostensibly executed according to his theoretical standpoint. Equally appositely the book is dedicated tone of the most sympathetic patrons, Cardinal Giambattista Rezzonico, and is addressed to an international audience of patrons and designers through parallel texts in Italian, French and English… [In the 1764-1765] Piranesi undertook various schemes of interior decorations, often involving furniture, for the Pope at Castel Gandolfo, for the Cardinal at the Lateran and for Senator Abbondio Rezzonico at the Palazzo Senatorio. In this period the artist designed the painted decorations in the Egyptian style for the Caffè degli Inglesi in the Piazza di Spagna and also devised several ornamental chimneypieces, ingeniously incorporating antique fragments, for various foreign clients. The architectural commissions apart, most of these achievements ae represented among the group of 67 plates in the Diverse Maniere. These images illustrate the text expounding bis philosophy of design, which opens the book…. Piranesi’s criteria are essentially visual rather than literary, and he aired some extremely original ideas on the stylization of natural forms in antiquity. The plates which follow are intended to point out these observations, and Piranesi is anxious to point out that he has given a particular prominence to the chimneypiece. The 61 chimneypiece designs illustrated range from relatively restrained essays, such as those already created for the Earl of Exeter, John Hope and Senator Rezzonico to highly involved confections combining Roman and Etruscan motifs… Notable both in the Essay and in the plates is the unprecedented attention given to Egyptian style, which is represented by 11 chimneypieces and illustrations of two walls from the Caffè degli Inglesi… The preparation of the Diverse Maniere, like that of other publication among Piranesi’s more ambitious works, appears to have covered several years, and the sequence of plates frequently varies from copy to copy » (Wilton-Ely). 

L’exemplaire du Tsar L’exemplaire porte le cachet de la bibliothèque du Tsar à Tsarskoye Selo. 

Il est fort probable que le Tsarévitch Paul Petrovich Ier (1754-1801) en fit l’acquisition lors de son voyage à Rome en 1782 avec son épouse Maria Féodorovna, née Princesse Sophie Dorothée de Württemberg (1759-1828). 

Cet exemplaire fit parti de ventes importantes effectuées par l’état soviétique dans les années 1930. 

Magnifique exemplaire, bien conservé dans sa très belle reliure crée dans l’atelier Salvioni à Rome. Il est bien complet de ses 73 gravures requises (double feuillet de dédicace, 4 planches reliés dans le texte, 66 planches numérotées pour la plupart, 1 vignette, 1 cul-de-lampe). 

Autre provenance : Hans Marcus (libraire à Cologne) – collection privée.