![]() ![]() There are two contemporaneous constituencies accreted to the Piranesian core work from Fellows and Affiliated Fellows of the American Academy in Rome (AAR), and student projects from a Spring 2020 UTK School of Architecture seminar/workshop. Yet, since the publication of such relatively recent paradigm-shifting works as Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (1987), it is an idea that continues to gain currency. Piranesi’s historical exegesis was eschewed by most of his contemporaries. These tectonic drawings (expressions of idea through construction and structure) illustrate his vitriolic prose, arguing for the hegemony of Roman architecture based on Etruscan and Egyptian roots. ![]() Absent the visual hyperbole of the vedute, Piranesi uses materials and methods of construction to shore-up his argument against French and German academicians who favored Greek antiquity as the source of later (read lesser) Roman art and architecture. These analytique-like compositions are remarkable, not because of what they depict or document, but because of what Piranesi demonstrates. The core of the exhibition is not Piranesi’s vedute (or views) however rather, our focus is his obsessive study of ancient Roman construction techniques primarily from, Della Magnificenza ed Architettura de Romani (1758-61). Particularly later in his career, Piranesi often used perspectival representation, less to document than to depict – to incite in those who viewed his images, the sensations of the sublime, a simulacrum of his own responses to these singular places. 185 of these were published in his well-known, Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna (Various Views of Ancient and Modern Rome) and his later, Varie Vedute di Roma (Various Views of Rome), both of which he printed continuously, from his early twenties until his last years, capturing the full range of his artistic development. During his brief but massively productive life Piranesi created over one thousand copper plate etchings of Rome and its environs, albeit not always as others saw it. ![]() October 04, 2020, marked the 300th birth anniversary of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), the Veneto-born Roman architect, delineator, amateur archeologist, historical fabulist, and theorist. ![]()
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