This heavily populated etching shows the ruins of the house and baths of Sallust and the ruin of a temple that might have been of Venus. Crowded with people roaming around, conversing, pointing, standing on top of walls, and the kneeling figure in the foreground, this arial view shows the vibrancy of these ruins in Piranesi’s time and, following the manipulated perspectives of the three previous views, forcefully brings the modern into the ancient by conspicuously signaling the compressed distance between foreground and background. The elevated vantage point allows him to play with proportions, distances, and perspective, which the oblong etching plate enhanced. The cropping of the monument emphasizes the sense that this is a snapshot of a moment in the eighteenth century. The lightly etched background contrasts sharply with the dark foreground of overgrown building fragments. There, the dominant figure addresses another who is lying on the ground in front of him and gestures towards the right. Following his outstretched arm, we see a group of staffage figures, whose significantly smaller size quickly signals compressed depth.

The large and numerous annotation markers also create a sense of depth between the surface of the representational image and the three-dimensional space it depicts.  He is equally detailed in his descriptions and his image. In the Index to the Map of Rome, Piranesi describes the fortified wall (no. 111), the reservoirs from the roof, and a staircase painted with grotesques that remain (no. 112). In the image’s key, he explains that the octagonal building was thought to be the temple of Venus because a statue of her likeness was found here (C). Part of the remains of the house is a large balcony or entrance area where the staffage figures take a closer look (above the middle letter B). With fine, etched lines, Piranesi paints the image of crumbling walls slowly overgrown by nature. At odds with the prominent foreground and large annotation markers, the remains at the top of the center of the image are so faint as to invite the viewer to complete them. These alternations between surface and depth, between dark and light lines, also join the movement between image and text that the volume’s structures of annotation (cross-reference and annotation) create. (ML)