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The Digital Piranesi Main Menu About The Digital Piranesi is a developing digital humanities project that aims to provide an enhanced digital edition of the works of Italian illustrator Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). Works and Volumes Genres, Subjects, and Themes Bibliography Glossary

View of the Port of Ripa Grande

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4 Jeanne Britton
Contents of this annotation:
1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
1 Jeanne Britton
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
3 Jeanne Britton
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
6 Jeanne Britton
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
8 Jeanne Britton
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
7 Jeanne Britton
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
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1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande
2 Jeanne Britton
Contents of this annotation:
1. View of the Port of Ripa Grande

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View of the Port of Ripa Grande Following the previous view of the Porto di Ripetta, this image, also produced in 1753, moves to the other side of the Tiber and provides a different angle on the issues of order and disorder that image suggests. This is a more structured composition, with a distinct vanishing point and two clear diagonal lines, made by the roof on the right and the foliage on the left, that spatially contain the ship masts and organic growth that are dramatically etched in deep shadow. Despite this general pattern and its suggestion of containment, each side of the river is a busy jumble of people, ships, and, as Piranesi points out, ruins. The two columns of annotations below the image, which appear in many of his views of Rome, here parallel the banks of the river and the division of the composition. The eighth and final note identifies building remnants that would almost certainly be overlooked in the heavy shading and activity of the left foreground: ruins of medieval walls falsely supposed of the ancient Ponte Sublicio or Pons Sublicius, a wooden bridge that was repeatedly rebuilt in antiquity. The sixth annotation points out actual remains of this bridge.

On the right is the Ospizio di San Michele, or Hospital of Saint Michael, which served many purposes. As Piranesi details in a long annotation, it was a house for invalids and an educational and correctional institution for children, convicts, and “Donne delinquenti.” Such Enlightenment-era institutions are today often understood as agents of oppression more than recuperation. Piranesi’s composition here embodies the conflict between order, whether it be visual, civic, religious, or moral, and disorder, whether it be visual, natural, or human. While this image seems to forge a tenuous balance between the dramatic chaos of the river and the order of visual composition and civic authority, it is worth noting an episode from later in his life that resonates with the visual tensions and verbal detail of this image. Robert Adam reported in 1762, a decade after this image, that Piranesi was “distressed with the irregular conduct of his wife, who, as we say in Scotland, has been too great with another man and so he has put her in a convent for her amusement” (cited in Fleming 374). Piranesi’s composition visually and verbally underscores the effort to contain of disorder that was, in many ways, characteristic of his work and perhaps his life. (JB)

To see this image in the Vedute di Roma, volume 16 of Piranesi’s Opere, click here.