Image Details

Photograph by Richard Nowitz; all etchings the property of St. Luke’s Gallery, Washington D.C.

Piranesi wandered the Italian countryside searching for ancient relics—like this anonymous, spindle-shaped Roman tomb near Capua on the Appian Way. Known simply as La Connochia (the distaff), the second-century A.D. baroque tomb was one of several obscure monuments that the artist included in his popular 1775 collection, Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome).