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Piranesi's "Views" were accurate, if aggrandized depictions of the monuments of ancient and modern Rome.  The frontispiece is a composite of ancient fragments evoking a glorious past that time and nature reclaim.

The central armed figure is usually said to be Minerva, but more plausibly, she is Roma, the tutelary goddess of the city, modeled on an ancient prototype set up on the Capitoline hill in a plaza designed by Michaelangelo.