Giovanni Battista Piranesi, to give him his full name, was born in Venice in the year 1720. His father Angelo pursued the honourable calling of a stonemason, so suited to the progenitor of an architect. His mother was sister to an engineer and architect named Lucchesi, and it was to him that young Piranesi was articled. In his early years he seems to have been something of an _enfant prodigue_ and is reported to have been able to draw the architecture of Venice at the age of eight. At eighteen he persuaded his parents to send him to Rome, and ever after, although signing himself “Venetian Architect,” he remained at work in that city. At first, in his desire to obtain a firm grasp on the technique of the graphic arts, he seems to have attached himself to various masters. The story is told that he threatened one of these masters, Vasi, with the loss of his life because he imagined that some secret in the process of etching was being withheld from him. Such a story, whether true or not, together with the later one that he saw for the first time and married his wife within the space of one week, fits in well enough with the impetuous temperament and fine fury of work which all the etchings exhibit. The numerous controversies in which he was engaged in later years, sometimes involving the erasure of names from dedication and title-pages, are all evidence of the same characteristics--characteristics which may have made him, according to modern standards, a poor archæologist, but which were not without value to the artist and teacher of artists. In 1741, when twenty-one years of age, Piranesi published his first etchings, four compositions of ruins, afterwards included in his _Opere Varie_, issued by Bouchard at Rome in 1750. In 1748 he published his _Antichità Romane de’ Tempi della Repubblica e de’ primi Imperatori, etc._, containing thirty plates of triumphal arches, amphitheatres, and other ancient structures, mostly from places other than Rome. The price of this volume (Mr. Samuel informs us in his admirable book) was 16 paoli, or about 13s. 4d., which shows for how small a contemporary reward Piranesi had to work. In 1750 Bouchard published his _Opere Varie_, which contained a number of his imaginative designs for great halls, staircases and monuments, as well as his famous series of prison dreams--the _Carceri d’Invenzione_. From this time onwards followed in quick succession an immense number of etchings grouped somewhat irregularly in great folio volumes with varying engraved title-pages. The _Raccolta di Varie Vedute_ (Rome 1751) contains ninety-three small views and includes work by Israel Silvestre and other etchers. This volume must not be confused with the _Vedute di Roma_, in two volumes, containing large title-pages and one hundred and thirty-seven plates, thirty-four of which were published in 1751, under the title _Le Magnificenze di Roma le più remarcabili_.