Call for Papers | Piranesi @300
From the Call for Papers, which also includes Italian and French versions:
Piranesi @300
Rome, 27–30 January 2021
Proposals due by 30 April 2020
Organized by Mario Bevilacqua and Clare Hornsby
Concluding the year celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), this conference aims to reveal new aspects of his life and works, their contexts, and critical fortune, and we are seeking proposals for a comparison of interdisciplinary themes and innovative methodologies.
Some ideas of themes that could be addressed:
Piranesi as Artist, Theorist, Entrepreneur, and Merchant
Many aspects of Piranesi’s life and work still remain in the shadows: we hope to discover new documentary data, new drawings, new interpretations, new networks.
Piranesi and History
The Mediterranean civilizations, the fall of the Empire, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Egypt, Etruria, Greece, Rome. From the fall of the Empire to the Renaissance. Piranesi and the texts of his books, the birth of archaeology, the philosophy of history in 18th-century Europe.
Piranesi: Europe, America, the World
Piranesi as ‘global’ artist. His lasting reputation – from Rome across 18th-century Europe – takes on different aspects in different European contexts: England, France, Germany, Russia – and in the more distant United States and Latin America, Australia and Japan, maintaining close yet changing relationships with art, literature, photography and cinema.
Piranesi as Architect: Monument, City, Utopia
Though constantly designing, he was the architect of only one building, S. Maria del Priorato on the Aventine hill yet Piranesi always signed himself ‘architect’. His vision of Roman architecture and of the ancient metropolis states certainties and raises concerns about the dystopian future of the global city.
Piranesi in the Global 21st Century: New Methods for New Paths of Research
We can ask questions about Piranesi in the context of contemporary scenarios. His work continues to provoke reflection, inspire new projects and interpretations.
The languages of the conference are English, Italian and French, and the event will be open to the public. We invite doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, established scholars to submit proposals for papers that contain new research or use new approaches. These will fall into two groups:
1) 15-minute presentations on one event, object, or discrete theme
2) 30-minute presentations on wider issues
Please send a 250-word CV and an abstract in English, French, or Italian of either 500 words (for a 15-minute talk) or 1000 words (for 30-minute talk); the abstract should make clear the new content of the contribution. Submissions should be sent to Piranesi300@gmail.com by April 30th 2020. We plan to offer accommodation in Rome to speakers at the conference though we are not able to assist with travel costs. We propose to publish a volume of the papers of the conference.
Supporting Institutions
Centro Studi Cultura e Immagine di Roma / Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
Istituto Centrale per la Grafica
The British School at Rome
Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
Conference Organisers
Mario Bevilacqua and Clare Hornsby
Scientific Committee
Francesca Alberti (Académie de France à Rome), Fabio Barry (Stanford University), Mario Bevilacqua (Università degli Studi di Firenze, CSCIR), Clare Hornsby (British School at Rome), Giorgio Marini (Ministero Beni Culturali), Heather Hyde Minor (Notre Dame Rome), Susanna Pasquali (La Sapienza Roma), Frank Salmon (Cambridge University), Giovanna Scaloni (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica).
Exhibition | Piranesi 300
From the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:
Piranesi 300
Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, 5 October 2020 — 7 February 2021
The Kunstbibliothek is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Italian architectural visionary Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) with a special exhibition at the Kulturforum. The exhibition revolves around the Kunstbibliothek’s unique collection of drawings by Piranesi and the ornate books he published, as well as the rich collection of prints held by the Kupferstichkabinett. In collaboration with early career researchers from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Kunstbibliothek has conceived of the exhibition as a stage on which Piranesi appears in all his roles—as archaeologist, designer, scholar, set designer, and visionary.
Exhibition | Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
From The Morgan:
Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 29 May — 13 September 2020
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Architectural Fantasy, 18th century (New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Mr. Janos Scholz, 1974.27).
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 what is arguably the largest and most important collection of these works, including early architectural caprices, studies for prints, measured design drawings, sketches for a range of decorative objects, a variety of figural drawings, and views of Rome and Pompeii. These works form the core of the exhibition. Supplemented with seldom-exhibited loans from a number of private collections, Sublime Ideas will offer a broad survey of Piranesi’s work as a draftsman, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the artist’s birth.
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