Degli edificj antichi e moderni di Roma. Vedute in contorno, 1817. Notes on an Graphic-Architectural Experimentation by Giovanni Battista Cipriani

The contribution proposes a critical analysis of some architectural engravings by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Sienese architect, draftsman and engraver, working in Rome between the 1780s and 1830s. In particular, I related, by means of engravings as visual language, Cipriani’s graphic production ‘in contorno’ (outline drawing) - representing classical and modern Roman architecture, published in the 1810s - to the figurative experiences by the French painter Bénigne Gagneraux and the English sculptor John Flaxman, both in Rome around 1792. A ‘formal’ link is therefore hypothesized, highlighting Cipriani’s originality from the point of view of the architectural representation for the communication of artifacts and his deviation from the communicative paradigm promoted in Rome in that period, still strongly influenced by the striking visual outcomes of Giovani Battista Piranesi. Cipriani emerges as an experimenter of a communicative practice drawing its origin from the consolidated practice of architectural drawing and from the debate on the supremacy of drawing between the arts. In this sense, Cipriani can be highlighted as an ideal anticipator of the much more famous works by Paul-Marie Letarouilly, as well as a simplifier of the visual code aimed at popularizing architectures as an extreme graphic-visual remodeling of the cultural soul of neoclassicism.