Image: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/41.71.1.7_28/
Giovanni Battista Piranesi's De Romanorum magnificentia (in Italian, Della Magnificenza Ed Architettura De' Romani; in English, On the Magnificence and the Architecture of the Romans) was a contribution to the debate as to whether Greek art and architecture is superior to that of Rome. In the 1750s, intellectual circles were increasingly in favor of Greece. Piranesi had completed Le Antichità Romane in 1756-1757 and when Julien-David Le Roy published Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece (Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece) in 1758, Piranesi responded with Della Magnificenza. In Della Magnificenza, Piranesi argues in favor of Roman architectural ornament by drawing comparisons with specific examples from Le Roy's text. This is why many of the plates in this volume contain visual and textual references to Le Roy.
Piranesi advanced the view, shared by other scholars, that the Romans had learned not from the Greeks—as British and French scholars had begun to argue—but from the earlier inhabitants of Italy, the Etruscans. Piranesi used his knowledge of ancient engineering accomplishments to defend the creative genius of the Romans, but devoted even more space to a celebration of the richness and variety of Roman ornament.
Source: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pira/hd_pira.htm
There's a downloadable edition from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
The library's copy is thought to be from the 1835-9 edition (Firmin-Didot, Paris) or later (Calcografia Nazionale, Italy) since the paper is wove rather than laid. For evidence, see pg. 5 of Hind, Arthur Mayger. 1922.)
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a major Italian printmaker and architect. During a visit (1740) to Rome, which was then emerging as the center of European Neoclassicism, Piranesi began his lifelong obsession with the city's architecture. He was taught (1740-44) etching, the art form for which he remains best known, by Giuseppe Vasi. Piranesi then began to etch views of Roman architecture that reflected his deeply felt emotional response to the surviving remnants of ancient grandeur.
Piranesi's etchings, executed from the 1740s onward, are technically masterful evocations of ancient buildings that are simultaneously scholarly inquiries and fanciful essays in space, light, and scale. When collected and published (1756) in Antichita Romane (Roman Antiquities) the 135 etchings created a sensation throughout Europe. Equally stimulating are the superb architectural fantasies depicted in his Carceri d'Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons, begun c.1745, reworked 1761).
Copyright 1995 by Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc
For more information: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pira/hd_pira.htm
You can view all of Piranesi's work at the University of South Carolina's Digital Piranesi site.
Observations on the Letter of Monsieur Mariette by 
