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 most
important 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 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 Library & Museum holds what is arguably the largest and most important
collection of these works, more than 100 drawings that include 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 book, which will be published on the occasion of the Morgan’s Spring 2023
exhibition of Piranesi drawings. More than merely an exhibition catalogue or a study of
the Morgan’s Piranesi holdings, however, this publication is a monograph that offers a
complete survey of Piranesi’s work as a draftsman. It includes discussion of Piranesi’s
drawings in public and private collections worldwide, with particular attention paid to the
large surviving groups of drawings in New York, Berlin, Hamburg, and London; it also puts
the large newly discovered cache of Piranesi material in Karlsruhe in context.
The most comprehensive study of Piranesi’s drawings to appear in more than a
generation, the book includes more than 200 illustrations, and while focused on the
drawings it offers insights on Piranesi’s print publications, his church of Santa Maria del
Priorato, and his work as a designer and dealer. In sum, the present work offers a new
account of Piranesi’s life and work, based on the evidence of his drawings.