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Giovan Battista Piranesi<break strength="x-strong"/> Perspective of the water reservoir ladder, 1764<break strength="x-strong"/> (from the Antiquities of Albano and Castel Gandolfo)<break strength="x-strong"/> Etching 401x293 millimeters<break strength="strong"/> Donation Guglielmo Guidi in February 2002 <break strength="x-strong"/> Architect, archaeologist and, above all, engraver, Giovan Battista Piranesi is the most important personality in the Italian engraving scene of the 18th century. Author of almost 1000 prints, the Venetian artist is a true ‘wizard’ of etchings. He elaborates an absolutely new and original style, pushing the possibilities of the engraving technique to the extreme, creating chiaroscuro contrasts that were previously unthinkable. In 1761, the love for the rediscovery of “ancient wrecks” and the nostalgia for a grandeur now irremediably lost, led the Artist to venture into the Roman countryside, rich in an infinite number of archaeological finds and imposing ancient buildings. The journey took him to Albano, Castel Gandolfo and Cori, places to which he would dedicate splendid engraved pages. Three years later, in 1764, Piranesi published the large series of engravings (26 etchings in total) of the Antiquities of Albano and Castel Gandolfo, dedicated to Pope Clement XIII, friend and protector of the Piranesi family. The Perspective of the Staircase of the Water Reservoir is the fourteenth plate and depicts the interior of the so-called Cistérnone, a grandiose underground reservoir built by Septimius Severus and still in working order. The large staircase, which leads to the centre of the view, dominates the scene. The leaden atmosphere and the inevitable and dramatic humanity of the disinherited seem to evoke distant echoes of the Carceri – the visionary engravings published by Piranesi in 1750 – in which light and darkness are the undisputed masters of a timeless world.