PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista (1720-1778). Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi desunte dall'architettura Egizia, Etrusca, Greca. Rome: Generoso Salomoni, 1769.

First edition of Piranesi's celebrated suite of designs for chimney pieces and other décor in an imaginative classical-inspired style. English collector and antiquarian William Hamilton, in a letter to Piranesi, wrote that "I am delighted you have done this work for it will be very useful in my country where we make much use of fireplaces … I admire the way you have arranged them, and only you are capable of giving the engraving such a strength and so much character." Sometimes treated as a simple if virtuosic pattern book, the text and images alike of Piranesi's Diverse maniere also "craft a history of ancient art … [by which he] injects himself into one of the key scholarly debates of the 1750s and '60s: how to create a system for classifying architecture and art created by ancient cultures" (Minor). While Piranesi is rightly famed for his brilliant and imaginative work as an artist and engraver, he was also a serious antiquary and archaeologist, exploring not only an interest in the history of ancient ruins, but all the ways we might take their lessons into the future with us.

His work "manifests the tension between the closed actuality of material fact and the endlessly open possibilities tradition offers to invention" (Stewart). The present collection of inventive designs for contemporary decorative features exemplifies this, and was a major influence on, among others, the Adam brothers, whose work in turn helped define the English expression of neo-classicism. BAL RIBA 2556; Millard Italian 100; Hind p. 86. See also Heather Hyde Minor, "G.B. Piranesi's 'Diverse Maniere' and the Natural History of Ancient Art," in Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome 56/57 (2011-12) and Susan Stewart, The Ruins Lesson (2020).

Folio (533 x 400mm). Additional double-page engraved title, 70 etched plates, a few small etchings in text (very few light marginal spots). 19th-century half calf over marbled boards, spine with two gilt lettered morocco labels (one label stamped "Tom IV"). Provenance: Edmond L. Lincoln (bookplate).