“You can see almost fifty of his most commercially successful works in his lifetime … as a result of a question I raised about the future health and welfare of a beautiful group of these big format etchings (133 of 135). Indeed, it was Holden’s advice to the Library conservation team regarding one of the volumes of Piranesi’s renowned Vedute di Roma that led to such an abundant display. This treasure is their inheritance, as the long record of free access to libraries, galleries and museums demonstrates”. “At this point I hope that will grow in their awareness of, and pride in, the holdings of our public collections, particularly in Melbourne. Many of his prints appeared as illustrations in books, while collectors often had his other prints bound into folios at their own expense”, he remarks. ![]() Piranesi would probably have taken this for granted. “The location of the largest holdings of his works in Australia may also come as a surprise – not our art galleries, but our libraries. Holden’s research as the 2010 Redmond Barry Fellow, a joint program of the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne, led to the creation of this exhibition. ![]() It brings together nearly sixty works and seven bound volumes from the engraver and printmaker widely regarded as the most important of the eighteenth century, and indeed the greatest architectural artist in history. ![]() Colin Holden, Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, has curated Rome: Piranesi’s Vision (until 22 June, 2014). The largest exhibition of works from Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) to be staged in Australia opened to the public during White Night Melbourne at the State Library of Victoria’s Keith Murdoch Gallery. As Stewart puts it, “Rarely has an artist been able to combine rationality, measure, and science with a near-melodramatic theatrical sense of presentation as Piranesi.” The artist’s many depictions of Roman ruins were so powerful that they came to define the experience of the past for those visiting the ancient sites - with some visitors afterward recalling Piranesi’s prints even more vividly than the ruins themselves.“An artist who would do himself honour, and acquire a name, must not content himself with copying faithfully the ancients, but studying their work he ought to show himself of an inventive, and I had almost said, of a Creating Genius.” He wanted to be at once faithful to the material artifacts and unbounded in his creative practice. Yet he was also determined to create art that would itself stand the test of time. ![]() Piranesi strove for scientific rigor in his depiction of Roman ruins he was determined to represent the exact proportions of architectural achievements from the past. We are attracted to slowly falling buildings because they embody the effects of time passing, yet the artist attempts to defy time by creating a representation aimed at permanence. The son of a Venetian stonemason, his effort to preserve ruins forever through printmaking illustrates the paradox implicit in the representation of decay. At the center of Stewart’s study is the mid-18th-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
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