Avanzi della Villa di Mecenate - plate 119 from "Views of Rome", volume 2

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

One of the great architectural etchers, Piranesi is best known for his imaginary Invented Prisons (Carceri d'Invenzione), etched in the 1740's. He also documented the ruins of Italian architecture and antiquities in a number of series of etchings. This etching is plate 119 from his famous Views of Rome. The "Vedute de Roma" was a series of 137 etchings done between 1729 and 1778.

"Gaius Cilnius Maecenas (15 April 68 BC – 8 BC) was an ally, friend and political advisor to Octavian (who was to become the first Emperor of Rome as Caesar Augustus) as well as an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. During the reign of Augustus, Maecenas served as a quasi-culture minister to the Emperor." (wikipedia)

Maecenas' name became synonymous for a wealthy, generous and enlightened patron of the arts.

"Avanzi della Villa di Mecenate" depicts the remains of the so-called Villa of Gaius Maecenas at Tivoli. The Villa was made of travertine, the architect is unknown. Maecenas sited his famous gardens, the first gardens in the Hellenistic-Persian garden style in Rome, on the Esquiline Hill, atop the Servian Wall and its adjoining necropolis, near the gardens of Lamia. It contained terraces, libraries and other aspects of Roman culture.