Part III The Influence of Piranesi on Decoration in the XVIII Century
There is still another side of Piranesi’s originality, public ignorance of which may be said to be complete—namely, his relation to architecture, and the very great debt owed him by that art. That he was an architect who signed himself as such on many plates during his entire life is a fact ignored even by many of those architects who are most indebted to him; but this fact is negligible, together with the work which he actually executed as an architect. The benefits which he conferred were rendered in other ways.
His first, and perhaps greatest, service consisted in the collection of materials. The classic motives which he gathered and etched form an inexhaustible store of ornament on which generation after generation of architects has drawn, and will continue to draw. The enormous quantity and variety of classic fragments of the best quality that Piranesi brought together is in itself astounding, but a fact of still greater importance is that it was he who, more than any one else, gave these motives currency. In his day no one, except Winckelmann—now known chiefly by his influence on Goethe, and by his tragic death—did as much as Piranesi to foster appreciation and spread knowledge of classic antiquity; while his plates, both by their greater currency and higher artistic merit, did wider and more enduring good than could ever be accomplished by the work of a critic and connoisseur, even of Winckelmann’s talent and prestige. His boundless enthusiasm and his real learning aroused more people than we shall ever know, at the same time that his labors, so indefatigable as to be incredible, spread abroad in prodigal profusion the reproductions of the remains of classic buildings, statues, and ornament. The greater part of these relics would have continued, but for him, to be known to only a few collectors and frequenters of museums; and it is certain that more classic motives have come into use, directly or indirectly, from the works of Piranesi than from any other one source, with the possible exception of modern photography.
In this connection it is impossible to insist too much on his exquisite taste, which, although it had its lapses, as in his designs for chimney-pieces, was on the whole of the highest. This fact seems quite incredible if the time and place of his life be considered. The intellectual degradation of all Italy at this period has already been alluded to, and, art being always a reflection and expression of contemporary life, it follows that the artistic degradation of Piranesi’s Italian contemporaries was complete. It is difficult to conceive the rococo horrors of eighteenth-century Italy. In France the most contorted productions of the Louis XV style, or the most far-fetched symbolic lucubrations under Louis XVI, never reached such depths of bad taste; for the French, in their most unfortunate moments, can never divest themselves entirely of an innate taste and a sense of measure which give some redeeming grace to their worst follies. The lack of tact, of a sense of limitations, which often characterizes Spanish and Italian art, and at times makes possible splendid flights never attempted by the French, also permits them, when misguided, to sink to abysmal depths. It would be hard to find much good in the heavy contortions of the rococo work of eighteenth-century Italy, which, starting from Bernini, exaggerated all his faults and kept none of even his perverted genius. Amid this riot of bad taste, Piranesi, with his love of classic simplicity, his sense of the noble, and his feeling for balance and distance, stands out an inexplicable phenomenon.
In certain plates, Piranesi, while using elements taken from antiquity, created a style of ornamental composition which inspired or was copied in work praised for its originality, and passing under the name of other styles. No one dreams of speaking of a Piranesi style, yet there is many a piece of decoration that calls itself Louis XVI, or Adam, or anything else, which comes directly from the work of this much-pilfered Italian. He stands in relation to a great deal of architectural decoration much as do, in science, those profound and creative minds who discover a great principle, but neglect its detailed application, only to have it taken up by lesser inventors of a practical trend, who put it to actual uses, the tangible value of which excites so great an admiration that no thought is taken of the man who discovered the very principle at the base of it all. In such plates as those dedicated to Robert Adam and Pope Clement XIII there can be found, fully developed, the style we call currently Louis XVI, although the greater part of it was produced under Louis XV contemporaneously with the work which goes by that name. The style in question is there, with its exquisite detail copied from the antique; we can see its inspiration taken from the classic which it wished to reproduce, together with its fortunate inability to do so, and its consequently successful creation of something entirely original but yet filled with classic spirit. That interruption of ornament, that alternation of the decorated and the plain, that sense of balance and of contrast, distinctive of the Louis XVI style—all are here. To think that these qualities came to Piranesi through French influence would be ridiculous, for the style under discussion obviously took for its model classic art, to which it was an attempted return; and as Piranesi was all his life in direct contact with the source of this inspiration, he could scarcely have been formed by a derivation of that which he knew directly.
If this be true, it may be asked why Piranesi’s work did not create in Italy at least sporadic attempts at a style analogous to that of Louis XVI. The reason for this lies in the already mentioned condition of the Italy of that day, for a work of art is absolutely conditioned by, and a result of, the environment in which it occurs. Here and there a work of art may, by some phenomenon, occur in opposition, or without apparent relation, to its surroundings; but in such circumstances it will have no successors, just as an unusually hardy orange-tree may thrive far to the north, but will not bear fruit and propagate itself. A great critic has said: “There is a reigning direction, which is that of the century; those talents who try to grow in an opposite direction find the issue closed; the pressure of public spirit and of surrounding manners compresses or turns them aside by imposing on them a fixed flowering.” The torpor and bad taste engendered in Italy by political and intellectual oppression precluded the work of Piranesi from bearing any fruit in his own country.
To think, on the other hand, that Piranesi exerted an influence on French art of his day is not so fanciful as might at first be supposed. If it be true, as just stated, that it is impossible for the work of an artist to produce any result when his environment is hostile, it is equally true that an artist, or a body of artists, can exert an enormous influence when their surroundings favor and the ground is ready to receive the seed they sow. France was ripe for such seed as Piranesi cast abroad vainly in Italy, and in the former country an incalculable influence in the creation of the Louis XVI style was exerted by those men who accompanied Mme. de Pompadour’s brother, Abel Poisson, Marquis de Marigny, on his travels in Italy. Three years previously this great patron of art had caused her brother to be appointed to the succession of the “Surintendance des Beaux-Arts,” and after three years of apprenticeship, in order to make himself worthy of this important and exalted position, she sent him, in the company of a numerous suite, to Italy in December, 1749, to complete his education by remaining there until September, 1751. In his following were Soufflot, the architect, and Charles Nicholas Cochin fils, the celebrated engraver. On his return from Italy, M. de Marigny directed all the works of art undertaken by the government throughout France, while Soufflot built the church of Ste. Geneviève, now known as the Panthéon, and was one of the most conspicuous and influential men in the world of art in his day. Cochin, aside from being a great engraver, was intellectually one of the most interesting artists of the day, and, as M. de Marigny’s right-hand man, wielded an influence almost incomprehensible to us of to-day. The latter part of his life, he really ruled in M. de Marigny’s stead, and his absolute dictatorship in all matters of art in France can only be compared to that of Le Brun under Louis XIV.
That his Italian travels were the decisive influence of Cochin’s career is clearly shown in his own work, and is expressly stated by Diderot, who says of him that, “judge everywhere else, he was a scholar at Rome.” Soufflot was only seven years older than Piranesi, and Cochin but five. Now, when these distinguished Frenchmen were in Rome, Piranesi was already famous and frequented the most interesting artistic circles. His talents and his remarkably impetuous personality made him one of the curiosities of Rome, so that it is scarcely credible that these visiting foreigners should not have seen much of him. As their express object was the study of antiquity, and as no one in Rome knew more of the ruins or had so lively an enthusiasm for them as Piranesi, it is certainly probable that he influenced them deeply.
Aside from these men, the list is long of famous Frenchmen who studied in Rome during the height of Piranesi’s artistic production, and must certainly have felt his influence. It includes Augustin Pajou, the sculptor, who went to the Villa Médicis as Prix de Rome in 1748, at eighteen, and who afterward decorated the opera built at Versailles by Ange Gabriel, architect of the faultless buildings which ennoble the Place de la Concorde; Jean Jacques Caffieri, the sculptor, who was in Rome from 1749 to 1753; Chalgrin, Prix de Rome in 1758, successor to Soufflot as architect of the city of Paris, and architect of St. Philippe du Roule and of the Arc de Triomphe; Jean Antoine Houdon, the sculptor, Prix de Rome in 1761, at twenty, who came to America with Franklin to execute the statue of Washington now in Richmond; and finally Claude François Michel, known as Clodion, who gained the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1763 and filled whatever he touched with unrivaled grace, raising the art of terra-cotta figurines to a degree of loveliness no one else ever attained. It must be remembered that these architects and sculptors did not confine themselves to architecture pure and simple, as do our prouder and less talented contemporaries. With the spirit which animates all periods of great art, they considered no object too insignificant to be made lovely by their talent. They decorated theaters and houses, designing furniture, clocks, vases, and every article of daily life; filling them all with the consummate, delicate art that remains the despair of all who have followed. If, therefore, as is to be supposed, they underwent Piranesi’s influence while in Rome, it would have made itself felt, through them, in all the decorative arts of France.
If Piranesi’s influence in France be a subject for hypothesis, in England it can be decisively proved in the case of the so-called Adam style, a vulgar caricature of which is at present so prevalent in New York. Robert Adam, a Scotchman who studied in Rome, was so delightfully original and adventurous as to fit out an expedition to explore the then totally unknown Palace of Diocletian at Spalato in Dalmatia. He was also a friend of Piranesi, who dedicated his views of the Campus Martius to “Robert Adam, a British cultivator of architecture, as a proof of his affection.” Now Adam, a man of unusually alert mind and delicate taste, was a poor architect, with a most defective sense of proportion in the composition of a building as a whole, who nevertheless possessed unusual and distinctive talent as a decorator. His fine taste led him to cover his work with detail executed and often conceived by remarkable persons, so that much of the credit for originality and delicacy given to him is due, as with so many an architect, to the artists whom he had the cleverness and good fortune to employ and the ability to direct. In the preparation of his monumental book he was assisted by “Eques J. B. Piranesi,” as he there signs himself, who actually engraved three plates with his own hand, while the rendering of every design in the book shows his influence. Knowing this, it is impossible to doubt that Adam’s taste and style were profoundly influenced by, and indebted to, so original and masterly a mind as that of Piranesi.
A comparison of Adam’s book with certain plates by Piranesi will clearly show the debt, while a careful study of only three of his compositions—namely, the title-page before mentioned as dedicated to Adam and the two plates inscribed with the name of Pope Clement XIII—will in itself make clear that much decorative work called either Louis XVI or Adam takes its forms as well as its inspiration directly from the creations of Giambattista Piranesi. Piranesi’s influence can also be proved in the case of George Dance, architect of old Newgate Prison; of Robert Mylne, architect of old Blackfriars Bridge; of Sir John Soane, architect of the Bank of England; and of many more. The subject of Piranesi’s influence in England has been so exhaustively treated by Mr. Arthur Samuels in his monograph as to make useless any attempt to rehandle the subject here.
Still another example of Piranesi’s influence is to be found in the sketches of the present-day German, Otto Rieth, the originality of whose drawings is so vaunted. Very talented and individual they certainly are, but to any one thoroughly familiar with the architectural fantasies of Piranesi, the source of inspiration is so obvious as to make it impossible that Rieth should not have known the work of his great Italian predecessor.
The influence which Piranesi exerts on the École des Beaux-Arts, and consequently on the leading contemporary architects of both France and the United States, is enormous, if hard to define. The use of detail which he furnishes is never-ceasing, but more important than this is the constant inspiration sought in a study of those architectural fantasies which he has filled with the qualities of grandeur and immensity so much valued by the French to-day. The buildings of New York are covered with motives either inspired by Piranesi or taken directly from his work—ornament much of which would never have come into vogue but for him; while a recent number of a leading architectural periodical, without acknowledgment, printed a design of his for its cover.
It is ardently to be hoped that a wider and more just appreciation of Piranesi’s unique work may gradually gain currency. Mere productiveness is, of course, of no intrinsic value; but that any human being should be capable of so vast a labor as Piranesi must in itself excite in us a lively sense of wonder and admiration. When, moreover, it is found that his work, in addition to putting the art of architecture under an enormous debt, is distinguished by imagination, originality, sublimity, and immense skill of execution,—a certain portion of it at least possessing these qualities to a degree unsurpassed by any artist using the particular medium employed,—it is surely not unreasonable to attribute to their creator the rare quality of original genius.
Note: I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Arthur Samuel of London, both for material contained in his book and for personal courtesy.