With regard to chimneys, I cannot be of the opinion of those who would have no

other ornament on them but such as are proper to a door or to the front of a

portico. ... If it were necessary for chimneys to resemble any thing, I should think
they ought rather to be made in resemblance of a cup board or chest of drawers,
than of a door or front of a portico. ... I am rather inclined to think that chimneys
form a particular class in architecture by themselves, which class has its own partic
ular laws and properties."
Piranesi's designs put ancient details to revolutionary uses. The study of an
cient monuments, of nature and of the ancient writers "have enabled me," he says,
"to get out of the old monotonous track, and to present the public with something
new in this branch. Some will perhaps accuse my works of extravagance, but ... I
shall be very easy by what names my works shall be characterized by such as think
every thing extravagant which deviates from the old monotonous stile." Piranesi
had repudiated Palladio for the spirit of Michaelangelo and Borromini, the spirit
that reversed classical moldings and abolished architraves, imposed bold relief in
front of low relief, broke columns and pediments, and upended obelisks, caryatids
and pyramids in order to achieve dramatic shadow, active outline, and restlessness

putting forth and pulling back in all directions. The real ancestors of Piranesi's
mantels are not ancient Roman and Egyptian sculptures, but those declamatory
Roman baroque tables and harpsichords and thrones that historians have unac
countably overlooked until their designers are now unknown.
All the grandeur that Piranesi would like to have expanded into palaces and
basilicas had to be congested onto these mantelpieces. He packed so many ideas into
his designs that they were to beget a whole new style fifty years later when history
had prepared men's taste for them. Two events that were to lead to this change of
taste occurred within a few months of the publication of the chimney book in 1769
— Wedgewood opened his new factory and named it Etruria after the vases that we

now call Greek, and Napoleon was born.

Piranesi's designs travelled first to England, thanks to Robert Adam. Adam, who
was eight years younger, had studied in Rome in 1754-1757, when Piranesi was in
his thirties, both men drawing and measuring the ruins together. Adam urged Pi
ranesi to investigate the huge complex of built-over ruins on the Campus Martius,
and Piranesi dedicated the resulting book to him. In Piranesi's chimney book the
first plate and the only simple design shows a mantelpiece that Adam ordered for

Burghleigh House, built for Lord Exeter at Stamford in 1765. Adam got Piranesi
to etch four plates of sections and details of Syon House to illustrate that master

piece in his Works in Architecture. Piranesi wrote about Adam with more respect

SO