Francesco Piranesi (born 1758 or 1759) was an Italian architect, etcher and engraver. He was the son of Angela Pasquini and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He worked for a long period in France, where he lived during the French Revolution and worked on his series of engravings representing ancient temples and monuments. Piranesi was born in an artistic family. He was instructed in engraving by his older sister Laura together with his father. By 1775, he was assisting his father's work while at the same time engraving his own works of art. He then started to study with other experts and did landscape painting under the supervision of German Jacob Philipp Hackert and also did engraving with Giovanni Volpato.
In 1770, and again in 1778, Piranesi accompanied his father on two trips to the ancient Roman ruins in Ercolano, Paestum and Pompeii. In this he was part of a group of engravers which collaborated with Augusto Rosa and Benedetto in the art of constructing scale models of ancient monuments in cork. After his father's death, Piranesi acquired his father's publishing house and was responsible for printing most of the later editions of his father’s prints. Piranesi collaborated with Louis-Jean Desprez, a French artist, on a series of views of Pompeii, Rome and Naples which were advertized as dessins coloriés in 1783 and sold at Piranesi’s shop in Rome. It is rumored that Piranesi died from syphilis. This information came from an art appraiser at Michaan's Auction in Alameda. This disease caused Piranesi to become crazy and he did a series of fantasy paintings.
