Naughty Boy, Piranesi: Drawings and Etchings
“Naughty Boy, Piranesi: Drawings and Etchings” Arthur M. Sackler Collection Avery Architectural Library Columbia University in the City of New York “The Colosseum” by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1757. Photograph by R.S. Johnson Fine Art. Naughty boy Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the 18th century Venetian architect and Rake-about-Rome, confined most of his architectural escapades to copper plates rather than to completed works of architecture. His prints of fantastical Roman architecture, as seen in this current exhibit at the Palace Theatre Art Gallery of important Piranesi drawings and etchings from the Arthur M. Sackler Collection at the Avery Architectural Library of Columbia University, visually introduced innumerable generations of artists and architects to the majesty of antiquity. Excavations in 1738 of the ruins at Herculaneum, and later in 1748 of the ruins at Pompeii, sparked the revived interest in class...