Piranesi's Pages: Rome in Books and Prints, 1756-1776
Saturday, February 13, 2021 - Sunday, April 4, 2021
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) was one of the most talented etchers working in eighteenth-century Rome. Throughout his career, he produced many spectacular images of the city. His prolific artistic output includes views, or vedute, of Roman ruins and modern structures, fantastical reconstructions of the ancient city, and large printed volumes of text and image. His printed works reveal a deep engagement with ruins as archaeological objects, and his books conveyed both his knowledge of antiquity and his architectural theories. While Piranesi was a learned antiquarian and immensely gifted printmaker, he seems to have thought of himself principally as an architect. However, Piranesi executed only one architectural project, the restoration of S. Maria del Priorato, the church of the Priory of Malta in Rome. In the latter part of his career, the artist began to undertake restorations of antique objects and to design furniture and interior decorative schemes. His innovative designs celebrated diverse ancient architectural forms, incorporating Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and Egyptian architectural elements and ornamentation.
While Piranesi took part in a vast array of artistic, antiquarian, and architectural pursuits, his most important and influential creations were his pages. Piranesi produced twenty-six publications, twelve of which are large-format volumes filled with pages of letterpress text and etched images. In 1756, sixteen years after his arrival in Rome, Piranesi published his first large format book, Le Antichita Romane. In its four volumes on the monuments of Roman antiquity, Piranesi relied on innovative images and extensive passages of text to argue for the necessity of modern architectural reform inspired by ancient buildings. Throughout his career, Piranesi would continue to produce publications on antiquarian and architectural themes, some of which were polemical in nature. In the 1760s, the artist became deeply invested in contemporary theoretical debates over the origins of art and culture, ultimately arguing for the superiority of ancient Roman building to that of the Greeks.
Piranesi has long been recognized as one of the most accomplished printmakers of early modern Rome. It is less often acknowledged that he rarely produced standalone images of his city, but rather made pages that worked in tandem with one another to convey his knowledge and ideas about ancient Rome and modern architecture. The wide range of the artist's production represented here—several of his vedute, pages of text and image from the Antichita Romane, and his Egyptianizing designs for interior decoration—reveal an early modern architect deeply interested in the magnificence of the Roman past and in the variety of architectural forms present in its ruins.
The content of this exhibition reflects the research of Abbey Hafer, a PhD candidate in Emory's Art History Department, who was awarded a Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Object-Centered Curatorial Research in 2018. Her principal project required her to research individual prints in the Carlos Museum's Works on Paper Collection and several of Piranesi's published volumes housed in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory.
This exhibition has been made possible through generous support from the Massey Charitable Trust.
While Piranesi took part in a vast array of artistic, antiquarian, and architectural pursuits, his most important and influential creations were his pages. Piranesi produced twenty-six publications, twelve of which are large-format volumes filled with pages of letterpress text and etched images. In 1756, sixteen years after his arrival in Rome, Piranesi published his first large format book, Le Antichita Romane. In its four volumes on the monuments of Roman antiquity, Piranesi relied on innovative images and extensive passages of text to argue for the necessity of modern architectural reform inspired by ancient buildings. Throughout his career, Piranesi would continue to produce publications on antiquarian and architectural themes, some of which were polemical in nature. In the 1760s, the artist became deeply invested in contemporary theoretical debates over the origins of art and culture, ultimately arguing for the superiority of ancient Roman building to that of the Greeks.
Piranesi has long been recognized as one of the most accomplished printmakers of early modern Rome. It is less often acknowledged that he rarely produced standalone images of his city, but rather made pages that worked in tandem with one another to convey his knowledge and ideas about ancient Rome and modern architecture. The wide range of the artist's production represented here—several of his vedute, pages of text and image from the Antichita Romane, and his Egyptianizing designs for interior decoration—reveal an early modern architect deeply interested in the magnificence of the Roman past and in the variety of architectural forms present in its ruins.
The content of this exhibition reflects the research of Abbey Hafer, a PhD candidate in Emory's Art History Department, who was awarded a Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Object-Centered Curatorial Research in 2018. Her principal project required her to research individual prints in the Carlos Museum's Works on Paper Collection and several of Piranesi's published volumes housed in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory.
This exhibition has been made possible through generous support from the Massey Charitable Trust.
