Giambattista Piranesi was born at Venice in 1720.  Bryan says that about 1738 his father sent him to Rome, where he studied under Valeriani, through whom he acquired the style of Valeriani’s master, Marco Ricci of Belluno.  With Vasi, a Sicilian engraver, he learned that art.  Ricci and Pannini were much in vogue, following the example of Claude in his employment of ruins as a picturesque element in a composition.  But Piranesi excelled both Ricci and Pannini.  He was an architect, too, helping to restore churches, and this accounts for the proud title, Architect of Venice, which may be seen on some of his plates.  He lived for a time in Venice, but Rome drew him to her with an imperious call.  And, notwithstanding the opposition of his father, to Rome he went, and for forty years devoted himself to his master passion, the pictorial record of the beloved city, the ancient portions of which were fast vanishing owing to time and the greed of their owners.  This was Piranesi’s self-imposed mission, begun as an exalted youth, finished as an irritable old man.  Among his architectural restorations, made at the request of Clement XIII, were the two churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Il Priorato.  Lanciani says that Il Priorato is “a mass of monstrosities inside and out.”  It is his etching, not his labour as an architect, that will make Piranesi immortal.  He seems to have felt this, for he wrote that he had “executed a work which will descend to posterity and will last so long as there will be men desirous of knowing all that has survived the ruins of the most famous city of the universe.”

In the black-and-white portrait of the etcher by F. Polonzani, we see a full-cheeked man with a well-developed forehead, the features of the classic Roman order, the general expression not far removed from a sort of sullen self-satisfaction.  But the eyes redeem.  They are full, lustrous, penetrating, and introspective.  The portrait etched by the son of Piranesi, after a statue, discovers him posed in a toga, the general effect being classic and consular.  His life, like that of all good workmen in art, was hardly an eventful one.  He married precipitately and his wife bore him two sons (Francesco, the etcher, born at Rome, 1748—­Bryan gives the date as 1756—­died at Paris, 1810) and a daughter (Laura, born at Rome, 1750—­date of death unknown).  These children were a consolation to him.  Both were engravers.  Francesco frequently assisted his father in his work, and Bryan says that Laura’s work resembled her father’s.  She went to Paris with her brother and probably died there.  She left some views of Rome.  Francesco, with his brother Pietro, attempted to found an academy in Paris and later a terra cotta manufactory.