This post was written by Romana Mastrella and Laura Staccoli (V&A Doctoral Placements)
From September 2024 to March 2025, Laura and Romana worked as doctoral placement students within the Prints section of the V&A Department of Art, Architecture, Photography and Design. During their placement they were trained in V&A collection management systems, and they systematically catalogued 1600 Piranesi prints in the collection. They made a special study of three Piranesi albums which were acquired in 2025 and their research skills have been instrumental in the interpretation of the new acquisitions.
The V&A has recently acquired three original albums of etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 – 78): The Campus Martius of Ancient Rome (1762), Antiquities of Albano and Castel Gandolfo (1764), and a composite volume containing On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans (1761) and Observations of Giovanni Battista Piranesi on the letter of M. Mariette (1765). The albums formed part of the private collection of the copyright lawyer J.A.L. Sterling and were generously donated to the Museum by his wife Caroline Sterling in 2024. Purchased at Christie’s in 1969, their provenance traces back to the Earl of Dunraven’s estate in County Limerick, Ireland.
Each of the three newly acquired albums bears the inscription “P. Wicksteed 1769” in pen along the internal binding, indicating an English 18th-century provenance. The study of the three Roman albums has revealed important information about their production and the comparison with other editions in the V&A collection has provided crucial details about the reuse of Piranesi’s plates in posthumous editions.
A Venetian architect by training, Piranesi spent most of his life in Rome, a city that became the focal point of his artistic and intellectual career. Arriving in the Eternal City in the 1740s, during a period of excitement over the discovery of ancient monuments, Piranesi became fascinated by the scale and complexity of Roman architecture. Throughout his life, Piranesi produced over a thousand etchings, many of which were released in series, combining traditional topographical views and ideal reconstructions of ruined buildings still visible in and outside Rome. His large-scale prints gained widespread popularity, and his work was republished for years after he died in 1778. His workshop, run by his son Francesco (1758 – 1810), continued to issue his prints first in Rome and later in Paris.
The V&A holds an exceptional set of 27 volumes of etchings from the First Paris Edition (1800 – 10), encompassing all of Piranesi’s major series (with 1,239 plates in total), and a complete set of 29 volumes from the Second Paris Edition (1835 – 37), now in the National Art Library. The V&A also holds an original album containing eight plates from the famous Imaginary Prisons series, all in their first states, dated around 1750, and Some Views of Triumphal Arches, first published in 1748. In addition, a significant number of individual plates dating back to as early as 1743 are also part of the collection, including rare impressions of Piranesi’s early frontispieces to the Roman Antiquities series. The plates are in excellent condition, offering a full appreciation of Piranesi’s virtuoso etching technique and inventive imagination.
The three new albums represent an important addition to the corpus of Piranesi’s works in the museum. According to Piranesi’s cataloguer John Wilton-Ely, The Campus Martius of Ancient Rome occupies a critical position in the artist’s intellectual and artistic oeuvre, representing both a synthesis of his archaeological interests and his masterful etching technique. Here, Piranesi spectacularly reconstructs the plan of ancient Rome and explores the urban growth of the monumental zone on the left bank of the river Tiber. Like other works from the 1760s, the Campus Martius combines archaeological inquiry with polemical intent, using historical evidence to celebrate the inventive genius of the Romans. The album is dedicated to a friend of Giovanni Battista, the British architect Robert Adam (1728 – 92), with whom Piranesi shared his fascination for Roman architecture.
Conversely, the Antiquities of Albano and Castel Gandolfo and On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans are dedicated to Pope Clement XIII, a choice that underlines his political and intellectual affiliations. The Pope, an enthusiastic supporter of Piranesi’s archaeological studies, maintained a summer residence at Castel Gandolfo overlooking the lake, an area that Piranesi explored in his Antiquities series. On the Grandeur alsoincludes the complete text of Observations of Giovanni Battista Piranesi on the letter of M. Mariette, Piranesi’s pointed rebuttal to the French antiquarian’s 1764 critique. Mariette had notoriously rejected Piranesi’s claims about the originality of Roman architecture, insisting instead on the primacy of Greek influence. In his Observations, Piranesi systematically refutes Mariette’s assertions, defending the Roman and Etruscan architectural supremacy.
The three volumes feature elaborated frontispieces and bilingual Latin-Italian dedicatory text. The presence of text plates is a characteristic of editions printed during Piranesi’s lifetime and is notably absent in later editions. Additionally, two of the Roman albums, The Campus Martius of Ancient Rome and On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans, include an imprimatur, an official ecclesiastical approval issued by the Maestro del Sacro Palazzo in Rome. The imprimatur denoted the intellectual prestige of the publications, protecting works from unauthorized reproduction.
The analysis of watermarks revealed the use of contemporary Italian papers. A fleur-de-lys within a crowned double circle topped with a cross and a small circle and the letter ‘F’ at the base in On the grandeur matches a mid-18th-century design listed in Heawood’s catalogue of watermarks of the 17th and 18th centuries (no. 1640). Although undated, its characteristics suggest an Italian origin and support a date around 1760. A similar watermark appears in Campus Martius, (Heawood no. 1639) with the letters ‘C’, ‘F’, ‘C’ at the base, confirming a Roman production in the 1760s. The watermark found in the Antiquities with a fleur-de-lys inscribed in a circle with the letter ‘B’ resembles a design referenced by Wilton-Ely in his 1992 catalogue raisonnée (no. 17), dated late 1760s-early 1770s, and it is close to one found on a drawing from the Piranesi’s workshop in the Morgan Library dated about 1760 – 65 (no. 1966.11:25), confirming its Roman production in the mid 18th century. The albums soon made their way to England, where they entered the possession of Wicksteed by 1769.
By this time, Piranesi had established a strong connection with the British market, reflecting his broader activities not only as a printmaker but also as a collector, dealer, archaeologist and polemicist. His election to the Society of Antiquaries in London in 1757 marked a pivotal moment in Piranesi’s career, consolidating his position within intellectual circles and reinforcing his international networks across Europe.
After Piranesi’s death, Francesco became responsible for his father’s business. Francesco and his brother Pietro continued to issue Giovanni Battista’s plates in Rome and later in Paris, where they moved after fleeing the capital in 1799, following the fall of the Roman Republic. Taking their father’s original copper plates with them, they established the Calcographie des Piranèse Frères in Paris, aiming to reissue his works for a new, primarily French audience.
Recent studies of the Tessier editions (named after the Parisian bookbinder who bound the volumes) have revealed that Francesco frequently reused existing etchings and, in other instances, reorganized them with new ordering and plate numeration, occasionally adding his own plates. Notably, they appear to have deliberately removed the accompanying text plates, retaining only the etched plates in the albums. The etchings, appreciated for their imaginative power and compelling visual impact, were deemed strong enough to stand independently. This editorial intervention marked a clear departure from the Roman editions, which had paired images and text to support Piranesi’s arguments. This change in the French edition highlights how Piranesi’s legacy was adapted to meet the tastes and expectations of a new audience in post-revolutionary France. Around 1864, the Tessier albums were acquired by English architect Decimus Burton (1800 – 81), a leading architect of the Regency period, who played a significant role in the development of London’s architectural landscape. Burton’s interest in the volumes shows that Piranesi’s influence extended far beyond his own time and never truly faded, continuing to influence architects and artists into the 19th century.
After Francesco Piranesi died in 1810, the copper plates were acquired by the French publishing firm Firmin-Didot in 1835. The 1835 Didot Edition marked the reintroduction of textual content, rebalancing Piranesi’s original integration of image and written theoretical text (29 volumes are in the National Art Library). Four years later, they were transferred to the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome, where they remain today. As part of a six-month cataloguing project, all the etchings in Piranesi’s albums as well as individual prints have been connected with their related plate number (matrix inventory number) in the Istituto Centrale della Grafica. For the first time, a unique link to the original plates is now available on the Explore the Collections together with updated catalogued entries for each album by Piranesi in the collection.
With holdings encompassing the Roman, Paris, and Didot editions, the V&A’s collection of Piranesi’s prints offers a unique lens through which to examine the evolving reception of his work across different historical periods and cultural contexts. These editions reflect not only significant changes in the audience and intellectual milieu, from the scholarly circles of Rome and London to Napoleonic Paris but also reveal shifts in the interpretation and reception of Piranesi’s oeuvre. The museum’s latest acquisitions are a remarkable example of Piranesi’s albums of etchings produced in Rome for a growing English market and represent a valuable addition to the collection. They invite renewed inquiry into questions of provenance, print culture, and Britain’s enduring fascination with the grandeur of ancient Rome.
