![]() ![]() Nicolas de Stael and Hans Hartung created abstract compositions dedicated to Carceri. Aldous Huxley and Sergei Eisenstein wrote essays about Piranesi, and Edgar Allan Poe also dwelt upon the artist’s dark fantasies. Sets for Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Beethoven Fidelio were inspired by Piranesi’s engravings. Piranesi’s dungeons amazed Victor Hugo, who created a whole series of drawings under the influence of these etching, which in their turn influenced the symbolism of Odilon Redon, from whom these is a direct progression to expressionism and surrealism. In Russia, V.F. Odoevsky wrote a story entitled “Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi”, transforming this primary “representative of Roman neoclassicism” into a despairing and gloomy Romantic figure. ![]() This novel, which was unbelievably popular among aesthetes, including Gautier and Baudelaire, gave Piranesi a reputation as one of the first artists to penetrate the world of a sick subconscious. Thomas De Quincey included the Carceri series in the novel “Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” so centrally in the opium-induced visions of an “artificial heaven” produced by the intoxicated brain of an intellectual aesthete that the artist’s fantasies began to be discussed as a breakthrough into the art of the future. This series, which was not particularly popular during Piranesi’s life, a rediscovery of Romanticism attracted writers, architects, directors then and continues to do so now not only with its unusual subject matter, but also with its unusual spatial construction, which reminds one not of real architecture, but of the unreal space of a dream or hallucination. Carceri become of the works of art most beloved by modernism. However, while the series of etching entitled Carceri (dungeons), a procession of frightening, inexplicable and obscure images was not well known in the artist’s life, was many decades ahead of its time. Piranesi is acknowledged as a reformer of public taste and one of the progenitors of neoclassicism, which might be called the Avant Garde of the 18th century, and as such his name is associated with this movement. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) has an enduring place in the history or art as an artist who defined European art in the mid 18th- early 19th century. The phenomenon of Piranesi’ early fantasies is put in the context of a unique genre, and is examined at this exhibit as original sources, as is the influence of the Piranesi phenomenon on the later development of imaginative Veduta. Imaginative Veduta is represented by the work of the Galli Bibiena family, G. Valeriani, Pietro Gonzaga, G. Barbari, G. Mannocchi, many of which are being published for the first time. The second part consist of drawings by Italian artists of the 18th century who worked as scene decorators, designers and architects and created the unique genre of imaginative Veduta, which is important for understanding the style of the settecento, as the 18th century is called in Italian, a unique and complex phenomenon. Piranesi, "Drawbridge," A page from the 'Carceri' series, 1749-1750 Time this sort of juxtaposition has been presented in Russia. The Carceri is presented in two conditions the early one, from the BruhlĬollection, and a later one which was extensively revised. All of them are from the 1750 album Opere Varie, which was acquired by the Empress Catherine the Great in 1768 as part of the collection of Count Bruhl and became the basis of the graphic arts collection of the Hermitage. This exhibition, presenting about 100 drawings and prints from the collection of the Hermitage, is divided into two parts: the first is dedicated to Piranesi and will present the series entitled Prima Parte (“Prima Parte “), Grotteschi (“Grotesques”) and Carceri (“Dungeons”) in their rare original condition, which have never been published in Russia before. This exhibit is being held as part of the Year of Italy in Russia and Year of Russia in Italy 2011 program, which continues tradition of partnership and cooperation between the two countries in the fields of art and culture. On December 7th, 2011, Saint Catherine’s day, the State Hermitage Museum welcomed an exhibition entitled Ruins, Palaces and Prisons: Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Italian Eighteenth-Century Architectural Fantasies, dedicated to the early period of Piranesi’s work. Piranesi, Title page of the 'Carceri' series, 1749-1750 ![]()
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