Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Our curator John Marciari discusses our current exhibition “Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi” which examines Giovanni Battista Piranesi as a versatile draftsman and his vigorous drawings. In a letter written near the end of his life, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) explained to his sister that he had lived away from his native Venice because he could find no patrons there willing to support “the sublimity of my ideas.” He resided instead in Rome, where he became internationally famous working as a printmaker, designer, architect, archaeologist, theorist, dealer, and polemicist. While Piranesi’s lasting fame is based above all on his etchings, he was also an intense, accomplished, and versatile draftsman, and much of his work was first developed in vigorous drawings. The Morgan holds the largest and most important collection of Piranesi’s drawings, well over 100 works that encompass his early architectural capricci, studies for prints, measured design drawings, sketche