After Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) Italian, Etching. Titled: "Veduta degli Avanzi del Foro di Nerva" (View of the remains of the Forum of Nerva). The viewer looks upon the remains of a beautiful Roman building on a busy street in Rome. People gather around and some even inside the ruins. Overall Size: 31 7/8 x 41 1/4 in. Sight Size: 19 1/4 x 28 3/4 in. #1282 Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a major Italian printmaker, architect and antiquarian. The son of a Venetian master builder, he studied architecture and stage design, through which he became familiar with Illusionism. In 1740, during a visit to Rome, which was then emerging as the center of European Neoclassicism, Piranesi began his lifelong obsession with the visual diversity of the city's architecture. He was taught etching, the art form for which he remains best known, by Giuseppe Vasi from 1740-1744. Piranesi then began to etch views of Roman architecture that reflected his deeply felt emotional response to the surviving remnants of ancient grandeur. Piranesi's etchings are technically masterful evocations of ancient buildings that are simultaneously scholarly inquiries and fanciful essays in space, light, and scale.