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30 September 2022— 8 January 2023
PIRANESI
in the collections of the National Gallery of Umbria
From 30 September 2022 to 8 January 2023, the National Gallery of Umbria is hosting the exhibition PIRANESI in the collections of the National Gallery of Umbria.
The exhibition presents 61 etchings from the series of Views of Rome belonging to the museum in Perugia.
To complete the event, the museum is also showing the 3D animation film Piranesi, Carceri d’Invenzione 300 anni by Grégoire Dupond, with music by Teho Teardo.
Curated by Carla Scagliosi
Curated by Carla Scagliosi, who is responsible for the Gallery’s modern and contemporary collections, the exhibition celebrates the visionary genius of the great Venetian architect, lithographer and theorist in a selection of 61 etchings dedicated to the ancient and modern beauty of Rome and its hinterland, taken from the two volumes of the Views of Rome and chosen from among the most representative of Piranesi’s career of research and of the evolution of his formal and technical style.
No other work accompanied Piranesi throughout his entire career like the Views of Rome, symbolically covering every aspect of his production and underscoring his incredible inventive, technical and perspective skills, as well as the extensive imagery that underpinned his archaeological and antiquarian – but also visionary and imaginative – ‘obsessions’.
This enables the views’ painterly characteristics to be appreciated to the full, with the extensive palette of blacks and greys that illustrates Piranesi’s perfect mastery of the technique of etching. It also enables Piranesi’s increasingly obvious interest in antiquities and antiquarian research to be grasped as it became the ever more preponderant subject matter of his etchings, driving the artist to explore Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, with the intention of devoting to it an entire opus that sadly never materialised.
The Views were destined to generate an image of Rome that had been filtered through their creator’s genius and bequeath it to subsequent generations, spreading its fame throughout Europe. Captured in its melancholic decline and in the dazzling cohabitation between past and present, with its enormous ancient monuments and grandiose, magniloquent works of more modern architecture, populated by tiny, anonymous, frantically busy figures, the city condensed all the characteristics so typical of great modern capitals in the anticipatory vision of an artist who laid claim to the fundamental role of artistic licence and imagination to create an artform that reflected his day and age.
To complete the visit to the exhibition, the Gallery has included a video installation of the 3D animation film Piranesi, Carceri d’Invenzione 300 anni (5min 59sec), made by the artist and designer Grégoire Dupond, with music by the composer, musician sound designer Teho Teardo (www.youtube.com/watch?v=guLBWupgh-Q). The film was commissioned by the GNU for presentation to the public in October 2020, on the occasion of the third centennial of the artist’s birth.
Dedicated to one of the most emblematic masterpieces of Piranesi’s entire career, the Imaginary Prisons, the film uses new technologies to enable visitors to explore the spaces created by the “darker side of Piranesi’s mind”, accessing them and passing through them virtually through apertures and windows that amplify the sensations of disorientation and claustrophobia generated by the sight of this labyrinthine sequence of staircases, lofty heights, towers, bridges and suspended elements.
The seventh volume of the series Quaderni della Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, published by Aguaplano Libri and dedicated this time to the collection of Piranesi’s etchings held in Perugia that has also been reproduced in a limited edition, will be published to mark the occasion, accompanied by a 7 inch vinyl recording of The Ghost of Piranesi, with the original soundtrack composed by Teho Teardo for the animation film Piranesi, Carceri d’Invenzione 300 anni.
Originally planned for 2020, but postponed because of the pandemic emergency, the exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Battista Piranesi to mark the third centennial of his birth (1720-2020) marks an important milestone in the Piranesi Project launched in recent years by the National Gallery of Umbria.
In 2018-2020, the Perugia gallery organised an important campaign to restore the works on paper in its collections, including the approximately 140 etchings collected together in the two volumes of the famous Views of Rome drawn and etched by the Venetian architect Giambattista Piranesi, for the purposes of learning about, preserving and valorising the museum’s heritage and the works held in its stores.
The delicate work of restoration restored the etchings’ perfect legibility and launched the process of their digitalisation and inclusion in the National Gallery of Umbria’s enormous digital archives, as well as the project to study and research the works of Piranesi held by the Gallery, which also include the volume Antiquities of Albano and of Castel Gandolfo described and etched by Giovambatista Piranesi, whose panels will be the subject of another conservation campaign in the near future.
PIRANESI in the collections of the National Gallery of Umbria
Perugia, National Gallery of Umbria – Palazzo dei Priori (Corso Vannucci, 19)
30 September 2022 – 8 January 2023
Curated by Carla Scagliosi
Information:
Opening hours:
From April to December
Monday 12.00 – 19.30 (last entry at 18.30)
Tuesday – Sunday 8.30 – 19.30 (last entry at 18.30)
Closed on 25 December and 1 January
