Piranesi, etc.

July 4, 2006 1:56 PM

The Works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi:high-resolution scans of all of Piranesi’s etchings. Also, the plates from Les Ruines De Pompei by François Mazois (1812-38), and, the complete 9-volume Le Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (The Antiquities discovered in Herculaneum) published in Naples from 1755-62. Also, at the same site (UT-PICURE: the Center for Research on Pictorial Cultural Resources, at The University of Tokyo), images from the Stibbert Collection of Japanese costume.
posted by misteraitch (11 comments total)

Beautiful pictures in Les Ruines De Pompei. Thank you for posting this!
posted by nlindstrom at 2:49 PM on July 4, 2006

Wow—talk about embarras de richesse! I don't know if I'll manage to extricate myself from the Piranesi to give the rest the consideration they deserve. I particularly like the map of Rome that accompanies the first. Magnificent post!
posted by languagehat at 2:53 PM on July 4, 2006

I've always been in awe of Piranesi. There's something almost disturbing about his meticulousness; like Flaubert's God, passionately indifferent, missing nothing and ceding not one iota in the transference of sight to representation.
posted by Haruspex at 3:35 PM on July 4, 2006 [1 favorite]

I think I'm going into overload. This is too much. The Stibbert helmets are especially double plus good. Thank you very much misteraitch.
posted by tellurian at 4:31 PM on July 4, 2006

Piranesi's cellars have a dream-like quality. Nice high-res pictures.

Best of the web.
posted by jouke at 6:02 PM on July 4, 2006

Having spent summer 2004 doing field work in Pompeii, this was particularly enlightening and incredible to peruse. Thanks!
posted by rbf1138 at 8:08 PM on July 4, 2006

I missed this yesterday!
I love Piranesi ... thank you.
posted by grabbingsand at 5:09 AM on July 5, 2006

Oh damn. Double damn actually.
Damn good post misteraitch. And damn!! I only just saw mention of this on thingsmag and the bloody Piranesi site is now borked.

Actually, only the landing page, the intro page on Piranesi and the costume images seem to be alive. I'll have to try again later.

Are they better quality than the Australian University collection? I hope so - although they have large files I was a bit disappointed whenever it was I last saw them - a couple of months ago.
posted by peacay at 9:16 AM on July 5, 2006

Oops...I take that back. The Piranesi link is back up.
posted by peacay at 9:29 AM on July 5, 2006

..was back up. I saw some thumbnails. *sigh*.
posted by peacay at 9:39 AM on July 5, 2006

PK: damn! is right—it’s still not working for me today. I didn’t get to spend very long there myself, but quality-wise the images seemed as good as the ones you posted at Bibliodyssey recently from the Heidelberg site: not necessarily larger than the Australian University collection, but certainly clearer. Plus, this Tokyo site, provided it comes back up, seems to be admirably well-indexed and fully complete.
posted by misteraitch at 12:14 AM on July 6, 2006