Piranesi's masterful representations of architecture are now reprinted in large format alongside corresponding contemporary photographs. Monuments of ancient, early Christian, Renaissance and Baroque Rome (Colosseum, Forum, fountains, etc.) with auxiliary notes on both the etchings and photographs.

"The engraver and designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi published this lively three-part defense of Roman architectural "invention" in 1765, just as the "beautiful and noble simplicity" of ancient Greek art was becoming a tenet of Western aesthetics. An impassioned plea for a Roman-Style eclecticism that draws freely on all artistic forms and traditions, Piranesi's Observations anticipates the contemporary debate between devotees of a rational, minimal...