The Colosseum is, and has always been, the symbol of Rome; for centuries, it has fascinated artists, travellers, poets and writers. Piranesi had almost an obsession with it; he described it as the “Fabbrica la più magnifica delle antiche che sia rimasa ne’ tempi nostri” (Index to the Map of Rome, no. 310). He represented its structure many times in his works, starting from his first attempts with etching, like in the 1748 series Antichità Romane de’ Tempi della Repubblica, e de’ primi Imperatori (republished in 1761 as Alcune Vedute di Archi Trionfali). This veduta of the Flavian Amphitheater is still conceived following a traditional, well-established picturesque composition, faithful to what eighteenth-century Grand Tourists, and travelers in general, desired as a “souvenir.” A new approach to the representation of the monument is instead noticeable in two etchings he realized in the years in which he was working on Le Antichità Romane: this image and the almost contemporary View of the Colosseum in the Vedute di Roma. In both etchings Piranesi uses multiple perspective tricks to broaden the composition so that the observer's eye is able to adopt a standpoint that would otherwise be impossible in reality.
The present view of the Colosseum is focused on the majestic structure of the monument, which nearly occupies the entire plate and leaves little room for its surroundings; on the right, the Forum is evoked only by the high apse of the Temple of Venus and Rome, near which stands the bell tower of the church of Saint Francesca Romana (possibly to suggest the many Roman antiquities that were turned into holy sites). Great attention is given to the visual description of the amphitheatre, with its three arched levels and the attic; further information is given in the alphabetic key, where Piranesi specifies features that are now lost: parapets between the arches (B) and a covering, the velarium, whose posts were inserted in ledges on the cornice (C and D). The arches, Piranesi notes, were all numbered to let the spectators identify the different entrances. The only one not numbered (A) was, according to him, the one that lead to the passageway to and from Claudius’ porch. Later research discovered that here was a portal surmounted by a quadriga, probably a monumental entrance to the imperial seat, located in the center of the north side of the arena, in correspondence with one of the four points of the two main axes of the ellipse. In this veduta, Piranesi enhances the building’s magnificence theatrically, creating a grand angular composition in which the Colosseum, seen from the northeast to show its outer and most well preserved half perimeter, stretches horizontally to display half of its total number of arches. Visually, Piranesi exaggerates the structure’s intact exterior; verbally, he points to evidence of absence (Britton 2021, 963).
Piranesi might have achieved this visual exaggeration through the use of a camera obscura. The scene seems to be composed by various frames put together by the use of perspective, as is discernible in the curve of the building: in the left part of the composition the Colosseum appears to be represented almost frontally, while the central and right sides bend in a perspective distortion. Like many artists of the eighteenth century and Venetian vedutisti such as Canaletto in particular, Piranesi used optical devices such as the camera obscura, squared frames, lenses and mirrors, perspective technique and theatrical visual effects to create his own “vision” of reality and antiquities, to enhance the grand scale and the majesty of Rome and its monuments. This possibility is also evident in two of the four etchings that Piranesi dedicated to the Colosseum in the Vedute di Roma. In the previously mentioned View of the Colosseum, the perspective is further distorted as the result of the juxtaposition of partial frames taken by the aid of lenses with different focal length, given the difference that can be perceived in the disharmonic elliptical curving of the building, which appears exaggeratedly convex (Scagliosi 2022, 18). Piranesi achieves the highest level of mastering perspective techniques in the 1776 View of the Colosseum, which adopts a bird’s-eye perspective.
The use of the camera obscura, an instrument which, together with three lenses, Piranesi possessed (Borsi 1972, 22), confirms the importance he gave to drawing, conceived as a starting point in the creative process of etching. It is easy to imagine him wandering through Rome with his notebook, in which he recorded the main lines of scenes or architectures, decorative elements, inscriptions, and people: all these first ideas were then elaborated, usually annotated, and occasionally, as in this image, exaggerated in his studio, where they turned into spectacular, but also informative, artworks (Minor 2015, 35-36; Britton 2021, 963). (CS)
