execution; though styling himself an architect.

And when some pensioners of the

French academy at Rome, in the Author's hearing, charged him with ignorance of
plans, he composed a very complicated one, since published in his work, which suf
ficiently proves, that the charge was not altogether groundless." No such plan oc
curs in Piranesi's publications.
When Piranesi was forty-five Smollett found Rome still echoing with the quar
rel that started with the publication of the Magnificence and Architecture of the
Romans in 1761 . Smollett wrote on February 20, 1765, that the most celebrated views
of Rome "are the plates of Piranesi, who is not only an ingenious architect and en
graver, but also a learned antiquarian, though he is apt to run riot in his conjec
tures, and with regard to the arts of antient Rome, has broached some doctrines,
which he will find it very difficult to maintain."
On April 8, 1769, just after the publication of the chimney book, the painter
James Barry wrote to Edmund Burke: "The dealers play into one another's hands
and he (Piranesi) has heaped together a great profusion of marbles of one sort or an
other, which he would be glad to sell; but as nobody will be ever likely to mistake
them for Greek workmanship, for a very obvious reason, the reviving and carry
ing into extremes his old prejudices against the Greeks will be still the more grate
ful, should it contribute to facilitate the selling of his collection. I sincerely regard
him as one of the best engravers that has ever appeared in the world . . . and he will
go down to posterity with deserved reputation, in spite of his Egyptian or othei
whimsies, and his gusto of architecture flowing out of the same cloaca with Bor-
romini's, and other hair-brained moderns; his avarice, which stimulates him to al
most anything, would take ill what I have been saying, so that it were best you took
no notice to any body of any of these remarks coming from me. I shall no longer
have any fears when I get amongst my friends in England."
The criticism of his work outside Italy began quite early. One of the first ac
counts of his work was published ten years before his death in the second edition
of William Gilpin's Essay upon Prints. Gilpin was one of those useful second-raters
who have no personality of their own to color what they repeat from their intelli
In his wavering account one can hear the battle of the cognoscenti in
gent friends.
London. "The critics say, he has trusted too much to his eye, and that his propor
tions and perspective are often faulty. He seems to be a rapid genius; and we are
told, the drawings, which he takes upon the spot, are as slight and rough as pos
sible: the rest he makes out by memory and invention. From so voluminous an
artist, indeed, we cannot expect much correctness: his works complete sell at least
for fifty pounds. . . . His stroke is firm, free, and bold, beyond expression; and his
26