"The engraver and designer Giovanni Battista Piranesi published this lively three-part defense of Roman architectural "invention" in 1765, just as the "beautiful and noble simplicity" of ancient Greek art was becoming a tenet of Western aesthetics.

An impassioned plea for a Roman-Style eclecticism that draws freely on all artistic forms and traditions, Piranesi's Observations anticipates the contemporary debate between devotees of a rational, minimal architecture and advocates of an architecture rich in ornament and historical references."--BOOK JACKET.