Large folio (540 x 410 mm.) Sometime expertly rebound in a handsome period style half calf gilt, over marbled paper-covered boards, red morocco and gilt label to the spine, the endpapers sympathetically renewed; 2 engraved and etched title pages, engraved portrait of Pope Clement XIII, 222pp. (numbered I-CCXXII), followed by 38 numbered, engraved and etched plates of which 8 are double-page and 3 are large and folding; a bright, fresh copy.

A superbly illustrated volume and a key title in the debate concerning the relative merits of classical Greek and Roman architecture which had been gaining momentum within intellectual circles throughout Europe in the decade prior to the publication of the Magnificenza.

Provenance: Sir William Miles (1797-1878), MP, landowner and agriculturist of Leigh Court, Somerset. Created 1st Baronet in 1859. His father Philip John Miles (1773-1845) had had the original family seat, an extensive Elizabethan manor house, demolished in around 1812 and replaced a mile further east with a house designed by the architect Thomas Hopper, in a Palladian style with Greek Revival interiors. The pleasure grounds and park were in large part laid out by Humphry Repton, who provided a Red Book with his designs. It may be that the present copy of Della Magnificenza entered the library at Leigh Court under Philip Miles’s ownership and possibly informed decisions made regarding the exterior and interior of Hopper’s designs for the new house.

A separately issued supplement titled Osservazioni appeared in 1765.

John Wilton-Ely. The Mind And Art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. 1978. Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The Complete Etchings. Volumes I and II. 1994.
Focillon 927-966; Wilton-Ely 753-798

Stock number: 1707