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Side View of the Capitoline Hill
This foreshortened view of what is essentially a Renaissance reconstruction atop ancient rubble foregrounds Piranesi’s aesthetic preference for antiquity and suggests a transition in subject matter from Renaissance architecture to ancient remains. This view of the Piazza di Campodoglio is from an angle later adopted by other vedutiste including Luigi Rossini (1790-1857) and Gaetano Cottafavi (1828-1864). In terms of composition, the most striking difference between Piranesi’s rendition and those of these nineteenth-century artists is the crowd of people in the foreground that Piranesi ensconces in a mass of architectural remains, an “outstanding group of tense figures in heated debate” (Wilton-Ely 38). The rubble here, which effectively limits a viewer’s entry into the image (Verschaffel 129), is at odds with the ordered facades of Renaissance buildings emphasized in the two previous images of the piazza, and the vivid detail of broken fluted columns gives a palpable sense of the ancient structures buried beneath the buildings in the background. In such close proximity, these figures—the largest of any human figures in the Views of Rome—seem to gesture expressively rather than indicatively. If they are unaware of the piazza itself, the image caption that appears to emerge from the architectural remains around them takes up the task of pointing to and identifying its restored and repositioned ancient statues. Most prominent among them is one of the two trophy statues of Augustus, one of which the previous image depicts in miniature and from behind. These so-called trophies are composites of battle implements that were seized from a defeated enemy and assembled on wooden frame. In the background, from a high window in the Capitoline Museum (item 4 in the key), a viewer looks north over the Piazza. From a perch the Tabularium, which runs along the rear side of the neighboring Senatorial Palace, Abbondio Rezzonico, the Senator of Rome honored in the indication of the palace (item 2 in the key), often invited guests, including Piranesi, to enjoy sweeping southeastern views of the Forum. The Tabularium is visible from the Forum in this view of the Arch of Septimus Severus, where it is labeled “5.” Piranesi did in fact sketch the Forum from the palace’s elevated position, which affords the view depicted in the following image. Between the two previous views of the Piazza di Campidoglio and the following view of the Forum, this image serves as something of a transition from modern to antique, from façade to fragment. With its vantage point and its composition, this view emphasizes the preserved and fragmented remnants of antiquity that, beginning with the view of the Forum sketched from one of the buildings here, are the subject of the rest of the volume.
To see this image in Veduta di Roma, vol 17 of Piranesi's Opere, click here.
