In Piranesi’s Candelabra v.E. promises a reassessment of the three colossal marble candelabra ‘restored’ – or rather, ‘created’ – by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, from fragments excavated at Pantanello, the village near Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, in the 1770s. Two, which were sold to Sir Richard Newdigate in 1774, are today in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and one was acquired from his estate in 1815 by the Louvre in Paris. These candelabra, once the most celebrated and sought-after of Piranesi’s works, were devalued as art historical objects in the years following the 1820s, based on their composite status, of ancient, fifteenth- and eighteenth-century fragments of marble, which reduced their value compared with antiquities that have survived with minimal, or less fantastical, restorations. V.E. seeks to rehabilitate Piranesi’s candelabra and to understand how they were viewed in the 1770s, but also to use them as the device through which what she terms the ‘human-thing entanglement’ of the late eighteenth-century’s relationship with ancient material culture can be interrogated. As she notes in the introduction (p. 2), ‘this is not a book only about Piranesi’, but also a study of how ancient objects were used to revive the classical past in the present in ways that were physical, psychological, artistic and active. It is a bold proposal, to investigate the world of late-eighteenth century neoclassical style through frameworks beyond art history – where the majority of Piranesi scholarship sits – to consider how the candelabra contribute to ongoing debates in archaeology, anthropology, psychology and about the development of the Style Empire.

These aims are coherently explained in the introduction, which introduces readers, via a series of subheadings, to the different questions asked by the book. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the candelabra – the decorative stands upon which candles or dishes of incense were burned in antiquity. In Chapter 1 v.E. explores the composition of Piranesi’s candelabra and their decorative schemes, expanding the analysis in Chapter 2 to the variety of iconographic forms of candelabra in the Roman period as well as their role in Roman decorative and religious ritual. This is useful background for the rest of the book and an essential point of reference for those interested in the ornamentation of these often overlooked objects. Chapter 3 situates the candelabra in the broader context of Piranesi’s restoration of antiquities and his publication of the Vasi, Candelabri e Cippi volume (1778) not as a sales catalogue, as it is usually described, but as a ‘paper museum of Roman artefacts’ (p. 78), which is a more productive way of thinking about Piranesi’s motivation in documenting these objects in the final decade of his life. Chapter 4 considers the presence of animals in the candelabra’s iconography.

It is in Chapters 5 and 6 that v.E.’s claims from the introduction are most clearly described. Chapter 5 explores the question of ‘animation’ and how Piranesi’s creations contribute to discussions about the ‘human-thing entanglement’ with, and revival of, the classical past. This historical analysis of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century experience is developed in more broadly psychological arguments in Chapter 6, which questions whether or not the eighteenth century’s response to ancient marbles was particular to that historical moment or evidence of a more natural human tendency to invest meaning and emotional agency in material objects. The conclusion returns to Piranesi’s candelabra and their influence on the reception of the fragments of antiquity, and their place in the development of neoclassical style. Piranesi’s Candelabra is a complex and highly original book, quite unlike most scholarship that deals with his works and legacy. It is theoretical and intellectual, which in places requires some commitment on the part of readers, but its conclusions represent a significant and important step forward in the way in which we might use Piranesi to think about the eighteenth century’s engagement with ancient material culture and its perception of its relationship with antiquity.