This page was created by Alexis Kratzer. The last update was by Jeanne Britton.
View of the Piazza della Rotonda [the Pantheon]
It is not possible to see the extent of the Pantheon’s rear that is visible in this view from its vantage point. This distortion could be seen to betray Piranesi’s interests—on fuller display in this veduta from the Campus Martius volume. A point of emphasis in the image above is attribution: the first annotation names “Marco Agrippa” as the creator of the Pantheon, and the second identifies Filippo Barigioni (1690–1753) as the architect of the piazza’s fountain. In the expanse of the space depicted, though, and in the resulting proportions of the image, it is the fish market, the “pescaria” named in the third annotation, that looms large in the deep shadows of the foreground. Through his visual composition and his combination of word and image, Piranesi makes this image very much his own. It combines market-stalls, pedestrians, and carriages as well as consumption, walking, and transportation. Piranesi renders the piazza as a space of activity and mixture whose chaotic juxtapositions are to some extent structured by the information offered in the numbered captions. The legible version of Rome that Piranesi offers, in this veduta and in general, resonates with Michel de Certeau’s analysis of urban life. He identifies the pervasive desire that renders the city as a legible text, that “makes the complexity of the city readable, and immobilizes its opaque mobility in a transparent text” (92). Piranesi shows us this image is his own in two ways: it aligns with the desire Certeau describes, by rendering urban activity as legible information, and it suggests that distortions, such as the expansion of the Pantheon’s rotunda, are a potential consequence of the city as it is made legible in word and image. (JB)
To see this image in the Vedute di Roma, volume 16 of Piranesi’s Opere, click here.