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The Digital Piranesi

Towers that fortify the Aurelian Walls

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Towers that Fortify the Aurelian Walls A. Torri di cui son munite le mura. B. Arcuazione interiore della medesime per uso delle Sentinelle. C. Comunicazion da un’arco all’altro. D. Feritoje corrispondenti nell’esterno. E. Piano di Roma anteriore alla costruzione delle mura Aurelianensi. F. Piano di Roma, o sia terrapieno fatto alle mura da Aureliano, colle rovine degli Edifizi che ingombravano il luogo e le vicinanze delle mura.; Piranesi Archit(etto) dis(egnò) inc(ise). A. Towers that fortify the Aurelian walls. B. Interior arches inside the towers used by the Sentinels. C. Corridors between the arches. D. Exterior openings that correspond to those of the interior. E. Ground level of Rome prior to the construction of the Aurelian walls. F. Ground level of Rome, or embankment made for the Aurelian walls, with the ruins of the Buildings that cluttered the area and the vicinity of the walls.; Drawn and engraved by the Architect Piranesi.
Positioned below the previous image on the same page, this imagined cross-section of the Aurelian Wall exposes other aspects of its internal structure, its effects on the immediate vicinity, and Piranesi’s imaginative reconstructions of Rome’s past and present. In terms of composition, this image is a scheme rather than a veduta (Kantor-Kasovsky 94), an imagined scene in which the abstraction of a cross-section overwhelms the suggestions of realism: the smooth, flat surface of the bisected wall contrasts with the variations of the sky and the quick recession towards a vanishing point on the left. Additionally, a caption seems to have fluttered onto the surface of the printed page, lying atop what it identifies as the contemporary ground level of Rome with its jumble of “rovine degli Edifizj che ingombravano il luogo” (F), in contrast to the ground level that predates the construction of the wall (E) on the lower right. This distinction is crucial, as Sam Smiles has argued, in that it performs “a vivid demonstration of the accretion of material over time, whose piled-up additions need to be stripped away, mentally or physically, if the original pattern is to be discerned.” The image, then, privileges the sophistication of the wall’s classical features over the jumble of architectural remains from later periods, displaying a radical multiplicity in one single frame (245-6). The image’s two illusions—the central one of the cross-section, and the marginal one of the curling page—attest to Piranesi’s commitment to architecture and its representation on paper.

In the Index to the Map of Rome, Piranesi refers to this and the previous image as figures within the same plate, because they are printed on the same page: he describes the wall’s construction methods that are demonstrated in the previous image and then comments on the wall’s towers that are, he says, displayed “nella detta Tavola VIII, alla figura II.” It is worth noting that this convention is true of every small image that is printed two per page in the volume—they are numbered according to “Tavole” (Table) and “figura” (figure). This reference to a previously mentioned plate indicates that he expects viewers to consider two plates that have been pressed on the same large piece of paper as a unit, as two illustrative figures set within the blank space of the page. In the following image, which elaborates the technical focus of this and the previous image, blank space is put to different ends. (JB)

To see this image in the first volume of Le Antichità Romane, volume 1 of Piranesi’s Opere, click here.