Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Visions of Grandeur
–
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720–1778) was one of the protagonists in European culture as it transitioned from the Rococo into the Enlightenment and the modern world. Today he is best known as a prolific printmaker who documented the Rome of both classical antiquity and his own time, but the scope of his work and influence extends much further.
Trained as an architect in his native Venice, Piranesi was an important tastemaker who spread his ideas in multiple ways, not only as a printmaker but also as an architect, designer, polemicist, author, antiquities dealer, and proto-archaeologist. Profoundly impressed with Rome’s classical past, he often took creative, even spectacular, liberties with the awe-inspiring images, the inventive designs, and the fanciful archaeological restorations he produced.
The exhibition showcases a selection of Piranesi’s artistic output and contextualizes the work within the important cultural debates of his time. The prints, drawings, a book, a map, and a recently acquired sculpture are presented in thematic sections, arranged roughly chronologically. They highlight the artist’s visionary ideas about antiquity, his role as a printmaker and antiquities dealer, his understanding of the place of the artist in history, and his conception of the relationship between culture and nature.
The exhibition draws from collections at the Art Museum and Special Collections at Middlebury College and is augmented with works borrowed from the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, and private collections. It is curated by Pieter Broucke, professor of architectural history. Many of the label texts were researched and written by Middlebury students in Curatorial Lab: Piranesi, Artist, Architect, and Archaeologist, taught at Middlebury College in January 2025.