By exploring the composite nature of Piranesi's art, Minor not only deepens our understanding of his oeuvre but also situates it more fully within Enlightenment conversations about the classical past. Piranesi's Lost Words makes a compelling case for understanding this eccentric genius as an artist akin to William Blake, one for whom writing and image-making were closely intertwined.
As Piranesi would have wished, this book reaches out to diverse audiences: not only scholars of various persuasions but also latter-day Grand Tourists who find Piranesi an inexhaustible source of fascination." -Bruce Redford, author of Dilettanti: The Antic and the Antique in Eighteenth-Century England, "With scholarly poise and forensic flair, Heather Hyde Minor restores the corpuscules to Piranesi's corpo-the body of work extending from Roman Antiquities to Different Ways of Ornamenting Chimneys. By exploring the composite nature of Piranesi's art, Hyde Minor not only deepens our understanding of his oeuvre but also situates it more fully within Enlightenment conversations about the classical past. Thanks to Minor's stimulating publication, Piranesi's fame as an author is restored, albeit in terms of a highly complex kind of authorship, the peculiarities of which we can be grateful to her for articulating." -Basile Baudez, Eighteenth-Century Studies, "With scholarly poise and forensic flair, Heather Hyde Minor restores the corpuscules to Piranesi's corpo-the body of work extending from Roman Antiquities to Different Ways of Ornamenting Chimneys. By examining Piranesi's print and book composition, manufacture, publication, promotion, competition, and consumption, Minor also offers a richly textured portrayal of European Enlightenment culture." -Choice, "Compelling and beautifully written. Illustrated with 130 plates of excellent quality, the book itself is a visual feast and an engaging read. Gordon, Trinity College, "A fascinating examination of one of the most original artists of the 18th century. She also gives us an immediate feeling for Piranesi the obstinate, sometimes disputatious scholar-artist who did not shrink from debate with the socially mighty among his foreign patrons." -Alden R. Minor gives emphasis to Piranesi's words and how they amplify the long-recognized originality of his images. Here we can assess Piranesi not primarily as an architect or as an engraver but as a maker of books. "Unlike Piranesi, whose sheer volume of prose is likely to leave a reader exhausted, Minor leaves us wanting more." -Cammy Brothers, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, "Heather Hyde Minor has written an entirely new kind of book about Piranesi. Using new, previously unpublished archival material, Piranesi's Lost Words refines our understanding of Piranesi's works and the eighteenth-century context in which they were created. Piranesi's books, Minor argues, were integral to the emergence of the modern discipline of art history. Minor shows how this composite art demonstrates Piranesi's gift for interpreting the classical world and its remains-and how his books offer a critique of both the Enlightenment project of creating an epistemology of the classical past and how eighteenth-century scholars explicated this past. This study reunites Piranesi's texts and images, interpreting them in conjunction as composite art.
While the images from these books have been widely studied, they are usually considered in isolation from the texts in which they originally appeared. Piranesi designed and manufactured twelve beautiful, large-format books combining visual and verbal content over the course of his lifetime. In Piranesi's Lost Words, Heather Hyde Minor considers Piranesi the author and publisher, focusing on his major publications from 1756 to his death in 1778. But Piranesi was more than an artist he was an engraver and printmaker, architect, antiquities dealer, archaeologist, draftsman, publisher, bookseller, and author. Giovanni Battista Piranesi was one of the most important artists eighteenth-century Europe produced.
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