Giovanni Battista Piranesi Print, ca. 1800
GUEST: So I brought a print by, I believe, an artist Piranesi. One of my friends was getting rid of a bunch of stuff, and he had left this in his front porch, and it was about to rain, so I didn't want to get it wet. So I took it, just home with me.
APPRAISER: So you saved it. (chuckles)
GUEST (laughing): Yeah. Yeah.
APPRAISER: Did the friend you had, got it from have any idea as to what it was?
GUEST: No, he usually got stuff from estate sales, and he... Just anything that he wasn't interested in he tossed out.
APPRAISER: And when did you save it from the rain?
GUEST: Um, it was about five years ago. It's been sitting in a cardboard box in our garage. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Oh.
GUEST: I always thought it was something special, but I didn't really know much about it, and I wanted to find out more about it before I got it framed.
APPRAISER: It's an etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, uh, who was a major Italian printmaker, the major architectural etcher of the 18th century, and actually a personal favorite of, of mine. This print is from the, Piranesi's most famous series, the "Views of Rome," or the "Vedute di Roma," which was popular in his day and has been popular ever since. It's the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome. We call that area-- basically through here-- the Roman Forum now, and this is the arch itself. This ground is now probably ten or 15 feet lower. Because the land kept flooding, and they never cleaned it out. So it just was, all this junky soil was there. They then excavated it out, and that arch is still there, and it looks a whole lot more impressive, uh, these days. The print was first made in 1759 or 1760. This is printed later, probably from the first Paris edition, published between 1800...
GUEST: Oh, wow.
APPRAISER: ...and 1807. There's lots of different editions of the Piranesis, but in the, the first Paris edition, you're looking at somewhere in the mid- to high hundreds were, were printed.
GUEST: Of each, um
APPRAISER: ... Of each print.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And then there are hundreds of prints in this series.
GUEST: How did you know it was the Paris edition?
APPRAISER: Partly it's the watermark is one way you tell, and another way, along the bottom that's his original address and the price. They removed that in later editions. The lack of the centerfold, because the early editions were almost always had centerfolds...
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: Yeah. And then, the later editions had extra numbers put on them. You got sort of a junky mat here.
GUEST: Yes. (chuckling)
APPRAISER: But that's what it came with. (chuckling)
GUEST: I, I haven't done anything with it.
APPRAISER: Well, just, take it to a decent framer, get rid of that mat. But otherwise, it's in very nice condition for a print of, of this era. A retail value would be around $2,500 to $3,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So I, I'm glad you saved it from the rain.
GUEST: Yes. Yes, thank you.
APPRAISER: Well, it may be time to get it out of the garage. (laughs)
GUEST: Yes, definitely.
$2,500 - $3,000 Retail
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Understanding Our Appraisals
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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