Sublime Ideas

This beautiful publication accompanies an exhibition at the Morgan Library &Museum of the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). It is the mostimportant study of Piranesi’s drawings to appear in more than a generation.In a letter written near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi explained to hissister that he had lived away from his native Venice because he could find no patronsthere willing to support “the sublimity of my ideas.” He resided instead in Rome, where hebecame internationally famous working as a printmaker, designer, architect, archaeologist,theorist, dealer, and polemicist. While Piranesi’s lasting fame is based above all on hisetchings, he was also an intense, accomplished, and versatile draftsman, and much of hiswork was first developed in vigorous drawings.The Morgan Library & Museum holds what is arguably the largest and most importantcollection of these works, more than 100 drawings that include early architecturalcaprices, studies for prints, measured design drawings, sketches for a range of decorativeobjects, a variety of figural drawings, and views of Rome and Pompeii. These works formthe core of the book, which will be published on the occasion of the Morgan’s Spring 2023exhibition of Piranesi drawings. More than merely an exhibition catalogue or a study ofthe Morgan’s Piranesi holdings, however, this publication is a monograph that offers acomplete survey of Piranesi’s work as a draftsman. It includes discussion of Piranesi’sdrawings in public and private collections worldwide, with particular attention paid to thelarge surviving groups of drawings in New York, Berlin, Hamburg, and London; it also putsthe large newly discovered cache of Piranesi material in Karlsruhe in context.The most comprehensive study of Piranesi’s drawings to appear in more than ageneration, the book includes more than 200 illustrations, and while focused on thedrawings it offers insights on Piranesi’s print publications, his church of Santa Maria delPriorato, and his work as a designer and dealer. In sum, the present work offers a newaccount of Piranesi’s life and work, based on the evidence of his drawings.