Francesco Bianchini and Giovanni Battista Piranesi: pictorial strategy for animating the past

Abstract

One of the large prints in Francesco Bianchini’s La storia universale provata coi monumenti, e figurata con simboli de gli antichi (1697) employs a highly unusual method of representing an ancient artifact. The artifact is a collection of stone and metal objects within a two-chamber vase. Bianchini altered the traditional graphic conventions of scale, perspective and shading so that the viewer’s perception was unsettled, giving the sensation that the objects are in motion. Bianchini believed that the artifact was used in a prehistoric ritual in which the parts were shuffled during a mystical ceremony that commemorated the Great Flood, and his illustration suggested the experience of the ritual.

The 18th-century printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranesi is known for imaginative and diverse methods of representing the past. Here I posit that Bianchini’s print provided Piranesi a model to convey ancient artifacts in a vibrant manner. In particular, in the illustrations of sarcophagi in Antichità Romane (1756), Piranesi adopted Bianchini’s pictorial peculiarities. In doing so, the viewer is compelled to focus and refocus their perception of the objects in a way that brings their cultural significance to life.