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• 1 2021-03-30T11:16:11-07:00 View of the Remains of the House of Cola di Rienzo 9 Veduta dell'avanzo della Casa di Nicolo di Rienzo plain 2025-01-17T06:28:37-08:00 Veduta dell'avanzo della Casa di Nicolo di Rienzo fabbricata di spoglie di antichi edifizi, in contro la Chiesa di S. Maria Egizziaca.; Piranesi Archit(etto) dis(egnò) inc(ise). View of the remains of the House of Cola di Rienzo built from the spolia of ancient buildings, near the Church of Santa Maria Egizziaca.; Drawn and engraved by the Architect Piranesi.

  The odd structure depicted in this print is the home of Nicola Gabrini (1313-1354), known popularly as Cola di Rienzo, as Piranesi titles it, or the Casa dei Crescenzi. A leading figure in fourteenth- century Rome, he led various political offices included attempts to unify the Italian city-states. Piranesi’s is the earliest instance of the attribution of this building to Cola di Rienzo, and potentially its source. With the home's association with an advocate of Roman republicanism and its creative integration of ancient and modern styles, “the political and artistic ideals underlying Piranesi’s interpretation of the Casa dei Crescenzi went hand in hand” (Benes 65). 
  
  The building is depicted in two-point perspective, with the focus primarily on the ground level and second story floor. Although the top of the building appears to extend beyond the frame of the print, it is not clear if a third level of the building exists. In what is depicted, however, there is an uncommon amalgamation of different architectural elements, both ancient and early modern. For example, ancient columns are embedded into brick walls of the house, repurposed perhaps from a time when the building served a different function. Piranesi draws readers’ attention to one particular example of this intermingling of ancient and contemporary through his annotations (A and B), whose extensive commentaries appear in the Index to the Map of Rome and note Cola di Rienzo’s significance to the Roman people and embodiment of ancient Roman ideals. Piranesi seems to imply multiple ways of considering juxtapositions—both structural and intellectual—between ancients and contemporaries. Also of note is the inscription above the front door of the home, carved into a marble block in the shape of a semicircle. Piranesi transcribes the inscription in full, offers an extended description of the home, and notes “la bizzaria della sua costruzione” and its long history of being studied by scholars for its unique appearance and integration of spolia (Index to the Map of Rome, no. 164).
   
  As if to suggest the uniqueness of the home speaks for itself, Piranesi does not employ gesturing staffage figures or exaggerated perspectives in this image but instead, in the Index to the Map of Rome, cites the cultural resonance of this building as a reason to include it in the first volume of Le Antichità Romane, despite the fact that it also includes contemporary architecture. (CBA)