View of Monte Cavallo Square

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista

1750

Artwork Information

  • Title:

    View of Monte Cavallo Square

  • Artist:

    Piranesi, Giovanni Battista

  • Artist Bio:

    Italian, 1720–1778

  • Date:

    1750

  • Medium:

    Etching

  • Dimensions:

    21 1/2 x 28 5/8 inches

  • Credit Line:

    Wichita Art Museum, L.S. and Ida L. Naftzger Collection of Prints

  • Object Number:

    1943.169

  • Display:

    Not Currently on Display

About the Artwork

The Wichita Art Museum holds a relatively small but select collection of European old master works-on-paper. This print can be referred to as a capriccio. In its simplest usage, the 18th-century Italian term capriccio referred to a variety of architectural ornamentation, specifically a fanciful view of a recognizable building in a fantastic topographical setting, which was painted above an interior doorway. By the middle of the century the conventions of the capriccio had been widely adopted by painters and printmakers throughout Europe.

Piranesi, who made his living exclusively as a printmaker, exercised enormous influence upon his own time and upon the romantic era to come through his capricci of Rome. The conventions of the capriccio provided an important precedent for the expression of emotion and symbolism in 19th-century landscape painting.