Giovanni Battista Piranesi

On same mat as 1966.11:19; 20; 101.
Together with 1966.11:21, and 22, these decorative motifs all appear in the plates of Piranesi's Della magnificenza e d'architettura de' Romani (On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans), a polemical compendium of ancient Roman ornaments published in 1761 to combat the growing taste for the purity of Greek architecture. Piranesi admired the variety and license with which the Romans had applied ornament to various architectural forms. He himself used designs such as the grotesque head (copied from an ancient capital) and the dolphin not only on architectural capitals or brackets but also as decorative motifs in mantelpieces and other objects.