Over the course of his life, Piranesi produced multiple views of the Arch of Titus, one of the most familiar sights of Rome and famous monuments of antiquity. The triumphal arch, erected in 81 CE by the Emperor Domitian, memorializes the deification of the deceased Emperor Titus and Roman victory in the Jewish War. Like several other views of the arch, this print follows Piranesi’s predilection for juxtaposing ancient and modern facets of Rome, and like many other vedute in this volume, Piranesi uses the annotated, cross-referenced image to point out architectural details, either visually or verbally, that are significant, beyond our view, or absent. 

Piranesi’s chosen angle ensures the inclusion of the contemporary residence to the left of the arch, and the road before the arch is well populated by staffage figures. In two later prints appearing in the Vedute di Roma Piranesi goes further, panning out to include more of the road and incorporating more, and more active, figures to demonstrate that the Arch of Titus was sited at an important and well trafficked junction in contemporary Rome. To the modern viewer, these are unfamiliar views; excavations of the Roman Forum since Piranesi’s time have removed all traces of modern architecture and isolated the ancient remains. In the first of these larger vedute, Piranesi’s fascination with the juxtaposition of ancient and modern has led to the decision to crop the inscription out entirely. 

In this print Piranesi draws together several mechanisms for incorporating textual information into small images. The first is the incorporation of the ancient dedicatory inscription of the relief itself, in line with Piranesi’s fascination with the epigraphic evidence of ancient Rome (as is especially evident in his “Arch of Severus, and Caracalla”). While the dramatic angle required to juxtapose the ancient and the modern obscures the inscription at the top of the monument to some degree, it is still quite legible, and Piranesi’s audience would have been able to read the Latin inscription recording the dedication of the monument to the deified Titus by the Senate and the Roman people. 

The title of the print, “Veduta dell’Arco di Tito,” neatly imagined as an ancient inscription and incorporated into a fictional tablet affixed to the modern building, has the effect of subordinates the contemporary to the ancient. Last, Piranesi describes in the lengthy index entry for this image the sculptural elements of the arch, including the Apotheosis of the Emperor in the vault, which is beyond our view, and the triumphal parade sculpted on the relief panels on either side of the interior passage of the arch (Index to the Map of Rome, no. 287). Although these aspects of the Arch are deemphasized and difficult to make out in this print, this imagery, and especially the spoils of the Jewish War like the menorah, would have been most familiar to Piranesi’s audience. Perhaps Piranesi provides the descriptive annotation to satisfy viewers looking for precisely these famous scenes that are otherwise absent in his print. (SB)