Giovanni Battista PIRANESI: Colonna Trajana [Trajan's column] - 1758
Price: € 6000
Etching, 552 x 410 mm. Focillon 798; Hind 51, 1st state (of 7).
Extremely rare impression of the 1st state (of 7), before Bouchard e Gravier’s address.
Plate from the series Vedute di Roma disegnate ed incise da Giambattista Piranesi architetto Ve(nez)iano.
Superb impression printed on laid watermarked paper (watermark: fleur-de-lys in a single circle (Hind 1)). Small margins all around the platemark (sheet: 615 x 490 mm). Edges of the sheet slightly yellowed; tiny pinhole on Scala's l, otherwise very good condition.
Impressions of the second state bear Bouchard and Gravier’s address. Giovanni Bouchard, or rather Jean Bouchard as he was from France, arrived in Rome in the early 1740s. From 1753 onwards, he was associated with one of his compatriots, Joseph Gravier. By the time he etched the Colonna Trajana, Piranesi had already been publishing prints with Bouchard for some time: his name appears (spelt Giovani Buzard) in the 1749/1750 edition of the Carceri. We can assume that the impressions of the first state were trial proofs printed by Piranesi before the edition (also rare) by Bouchard and Gravier.
The Vedute di Roma series is one of the most important in Piranesi's work, comprising a total of 135 plates etched over a period of thirty years, between 1748 and 1778.