Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Horned Grotesque with Protruding Tongue

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
1720-1778

Horned Grotesque with Protruding Tongue

ca. 1760
2 5/16 x 2 13/16 inches (60 x 69 mm)
Red chalk on paper.
1966.11:40

Bequest of Junius S. Morgan and gift of Henry S. Morgan.

Notes
On same mat as 1966.11:19; 20; 101.
Together with 1966.11:21, and 22, these decorative motifs all appear in the plates of Piranesi's Della magnificenza e d'architettura de' Romani (On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans), a polemical compendium of ancient Roman ornaments published in 1761 to combat the growing taste for the purity of Greek architecture. Piranesi admired the variety and license with which the Romans had applied ornament to various architectural forms. He himself used designs such as the grotesque head (copied from an ancient capital) and the dolphin not only on architectural capitals or brackets but also as decorative motifs in mantelpieces and other objects.
Inscriptions/Markings
Numbered at lower left, in graphite, "32(?)".
Associated names
Design for (work): Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 1720-1778. Della magnificenza e d'architettura de' Romani.
Morgan, Jane Norton, 1868-1925, former owner.
Morgan, Junius Spencer, 1892-1960, former owner.
Morgan, Henry S. (Henry Sturgis), 1900-1982, former owner.
Bibliography
Stampfle, Felice. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Dover, 1978, no. 40, repr.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department