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.

Design for a Bracket with Acanthus Motif. Verso: Fragment of ornament

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
1720-1778

Design for a Bracket with Acanthus Motif. Verso: Fragment of ornament

ca. 1760
9 5/16 x 2 1/2 (upper margin) inches (237 x 64 mm)
Red chalk on paper, irregularly cut; verso: red chalk.
1966.11:22

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

Notes
On same mat as 1966.11:21;23.
Likely by one of Piranesi's assistants, perhaps his son Angelo Piranesi.
Together with 1966.11:21, and 40, these decorative motifs all appear in the plates of Piranesi's Della magnificenza ed 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. This bracket appears in plate 19.
Inscriptions/Markings
Numbered at upper left, inverted, in graphite, "67".
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. 22, repr.
Classification
Century Drawings
School
Department