PIRANESI Francesco

(Rome 1758 – Paris 1810)

Italian architect and engraver, son of the great engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Angela Pasquini, daughter of the gardener of Prince Corsini.
From his father he learnt the art of engraving and, as soon as he reached the right age, he worked like other workshop helpers, engraving copperplates under his father’s supervision.
At the age of 19, along with Giovanni Battista, he visited Pompeii, Pestum and Herculaneum and at his father’s death he completed the series dedicated to Paestum that his father had left unfinished, adding some own plates in the posthumous reprints.
At the age of 20, he took over the patronage of his father’s chalcography and continued to produce prints of ancient monuments and architectures.
After getting acquainted with the Swedish ambassador in Rome, he received tasks from King Gustavo III of Sweden.
In 1799 he emigrated to Paris under the protection of Giuseppe Bonaparte, transferring the copperplates of the calcography.
Here he reprinted the plates brought from Rome, but market adversity reduced him to bankruptcy.
In order to save the enormous patrimony of the printing workshop, the French government, with Napoleon’s decree, authorized the interior minister to purchase the propriety of Piranesi for 300,000 francs to be distributed to the creditors, but Francesco died a few weeks later.
In 1835, the auction of the 2202 copperplates was announced. These were acquired by the publisher Firmin-Didot and used for a further reprint.
In 1839, in the interest of Pope Gregory XVI, they were finally acquired by the Calcografia Camerale (today the National Institute for Graphics in Rome).