Getty Museum Highlights Career Of Giovanni Battista Piranesi

“Our objective is to introduce the full range of Piranesi’s activities as an artist, antiquarian, designer of decorative arts and books, and publisher, and to illustrate the development of Piranesi’s aesthetics and printmaking techniques,” says Marcia Reed, co-curator of the exhibition, and head of collections development at the Getty Research Institute.

“We are thrilled to showcase these exquisite prints from the Research Institute’s special collections at the Getty Villa,” says Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Visitors will have the opportunity to make an important connection between the fantastic and meticulously executed etchings of Rome by Piranesi and the classical setting of the Villa.”

Although born in Venice, Piranesi made a name for himself as a young printmaker in Rome. Fascinated with the juxtaposition of ancient and modern Rome, Piranesi treated his etchings as visual arguments in an attempt to advocate for a spirited new appreciation of Rome’s ruins and its ancient past. In an era before tourists could take snapshots, Piranesi sold many of his prints as souvenirs to English aristocrats on the Grand Tour in Italy. This innovative practice also afforded the average tourist, scholar, or artist the opportunity to bring a lasting reminder of the grandeur of Rome home with them.

While Piranesi’s sophisticated and highly detailed prints demonstrate supreme artistic ability and historical scholarship, several artistic liberties were taken within his etchings in order to convey a sense of fantasy and intrigue. Piranesi often placed great emphasis on the distortion of light and space within his compositions in order to make them appear monumental.

Prints from the 1740s and 50s show early examples of Piranesi’s style and its relation to his expanding interests and evolving concepts of design. The centerpiece of the exhibition is an awe-inspiring fold-out plate of Trajan’s column in Rome, which shows scenes from the Dacian Wars in an ascending spiral around the column, with a statue of Trajan at the top.

The exhibition underscores not only the meticulous and obsessive nature of his prints, but also examines the high volume of book and print production from his workshop, both during and after his lifetime.

The Magnificent Piranesi is curated by Louis Marchesano, collections curator of prints and drawings at the Getty Research Institute, and Marcia Reed, head of collections development at the Getty Research Institute. -- www.getty.edu