Veduta del Tempio di Ercole nella Citta di Cora, dieci miglia lontano da Velletri

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

From Giovanni Batista Piranesi's celebrated Vedute di Roma, a series of etchings of ancient and then-modern Roman architecture. A popular subject for European printmakers at the time, Piranesi's series often overshadowed his peers' "views" of the same subjects, and nearly overshadowed the architecture itself, as tourists who, expecting to be awestruck after seeing Piranesi's remarkable renderings, were sometimes disappointed by the real thing.

The title translates to "View of the Temple of Hercules in the City of Cori, ten miles away from Velletri." The Doric tetrastyle temple, built in the 1st century BC in Cora (Cori), Italy, was among the most often-rendered collection of Roman structures by artists during the "Grand Tour" of the late 17th through early 19th centuries, a popular trek for upperclass tourists traveling through Europe. This would prove fortunate, as during the Second World War much of the temple was destroyed by Allied bombing.