Pierluigi Panza's 'Museo Piranesi' catalogues Giovanni Battista Piranesi's antiquities dealing

A new book by Pierluigi Panza, 'Museo Piranesi' (Skira, 2017), catalogues over 270 marble pieces that passed through Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Roman workshop at Palazzo Tomati. Piranesi, best known as an engraver, also restored and sold antiquities from the 1760s onward, often creating pastiches like the two candelabra at the Ashmolean Museum. His clients included Grand Tour nobles such as Charles Townley, and later his son Francesco sold 96 lots to King Gustav III of Sweden in 1785. The book, winner of the 2017 EU Cultural Heritage Prize / Europa Nostra Award, is based on a 1778 inventory and two decades of research. Panza explains that Piranesi used his catalogues 'Diverse maniere d'adornare i cammini' (1769) and 'Vasi, candelabri, cippi…' (1778) to promote his collection, juxtaposing his restored pieces with famous antiquities like the Lante Vase. The study traces pieces now in the British Museum, the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, and the Museo Pio Clementino.