“Many years ago, wnen I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome” writes Thomas De Quincey in his essay on the effects of opium-eating, “Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever.” When De Quincey published his Confessions in 1821, the international reputation of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was firmly established among men of letters and artists alike. The style and thematic content of Piranesi's remarkable etchings fascinated diverse members of the Romantic movement—from Walpole to Hugo, from Goethe to Gautier, from DeLoutherbourg to Sanquirico.