View of the Grand Cascade at Tivoli, from Views of Rome

Prints and Drawings

1766

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Italian, 1720-1778

Giovanni Battista Piranesi had supplied decades of tourists with his massive, masterly etchings of architectural monuments in Rome and its environs by the time he completed his Views of Rome series in the late 1770s. The waterfall pictured here, in the ancient town of Tivoli, was a natural wonder, and the 16th-century Villa d’Este nearby channeled the same waterpower into a flamboyantly artificial series of fountains, automata (mechanical toys moved by water), and strategic cascades. Both were must-sees for Europeans on their Grand Tours.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Title: View of the Grand Cascade at Tivoli, from Views of Rome
Place: Italy (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Depicted 1766
Medium: Etching on ivory laid paper
Dimensions: Image: 47.1 × 70.2 cm (18 9/16 × 27 11/16 in.); Sheet: 50.5 × 72 cm (19 15/16 × 28 3/8 in.)
Credit Line: The Charles Deering Collection
Reference Number: 1927.4780
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/48064/manifest.json

Hind 75 I or II/V

Focillon 779

Ficacci 946

Wilton-Ely 208

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