Piranesi (Giovanni Battista)

from the Rome edition of ‘Vedute di Roma’, depicting the church of St Paul, founded in the 4th century to mark the burial site of the saint, and called ‘outside the wall as it lies on Italian, rather than Vatican soil, though the structure itself belongs wholly to the Vatican and is one of the four principal papal basilicas, along with St John in Lateran, St Peter’s itself, and St Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore), this interior view showing the early 7th century reworking that raised the floor to place the altar directly over the saint’s tomb,

etching with engraving, on thick laid paper with a fleur-de-lys in a double circle watermark, 3rd state with the artist’s address and price, 410 x 605 mm., slight splitting at head and foot of central vertical fold with parallel soft creasing, marginal surface dust, particularly affecting lower right sheet edge, faint marginal spotting and damp-staining, [H.7 III; F.792; WE.138],