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Piranesi’s Paestum: Master Drawings Uncovered
Sir John Soane's Museum
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
London, WC2A 3BP England, United Kingdom
Amongst the most significant examples of European graphic art are the fifteen highly resolved preparatory drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and held in Sir John Soane's Museum. Produced for Piranesi's last great graphic project his Différentes vues de Pesto…, published posthumously 1778, they show views of the three great Doric temples in the former Greek colony of Paestum, located dramatically on a plateau of not far from the coast of the Gulf of Salerno. Piranesi visited the site in 1777 and produced the fifteen drawings that are in the Soane and two further drawings – one in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (it is likely that twenty-one drawings were originally produced to match the twenty-one plates in Différentes vues de Pesto…). The drawings are very close to the finished prints and are particularly accomplished examples of Piranesi’s topographical observation. For the first time these powerful drawings are to be shown together in a focused exhibition which will look at them as great works of art in their own right as well as examining how they revolutionized architects' and artists' understanding of early Greek Classical architecture.
Now to May 18, 2013
Sir John Soane's Museum

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