In the year of the Architecture Biennale, the exhibition “Piranesi Roma Basilico” celebrates the charm of Rome by comparing the ancient city in Piranesi’s engravings and the contemporary capital captured in Gabriele Basilico’s photographs.
On the occasion of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giambattista Piranesi (Venice, 1720 – Rome, 1778), the Fondazione Giorgio Cini pays tribute to the great Venetian artist in the exhibition “Piranesi Roma Basilico”, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, director of the Institute of Art History, in collaboration with the Archivio Gabriele Basilico. Until November 23rd 2020, the second floor of the Palazzo Cini Gallery at San Vio will host a comparison of lyrical cityscapes of Rome featuring the historic etchings of Giambattista Piranesi and the modern photography of Gabriele Basilico. Visitors will thus have the chance to see a previously unshown selection of the work of the great landscape photographer, commissioned by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in 2010.
“Piranesi Roma Basilico” returns to the figure of Piranesi as vedutista, explored in the exhibition “The Arts of Piranesi“, conceived by the Fondazione Cini in 2010, with an original interpretation of his views of Rome set beside the work of the contemporary landscape photographer Gabriele Basilico.
Visitors will be able to admire some of the great symbolic landmarks of the eternal city in twenty-five original prints made in the 18th century by the Venetian engraver, selected from the complete corpus preserved in the Cini graphic art collections, and in twenty-six views of Rome by the Milanese photographer, taken from the same viewpoint as the Piranesi etchings, including twelve not shown in the exhibition “The Arts of Piranesi. Architect, Etcher, Vedutista, Designer“, staged at the Fondazione Cini in 2010.
Inspired by writer Marguerite Yourcenar’s wonderful description of Giambattista Piranesi in the early 1960s, Basilico took his camera to all the sites of Piranesi’s views to capture their extraordinary modernity.
Website: www.cini.it
Location: Palazzo Cini, Campo San Vio, Venice
Schedule: until November 23rd, 2020
Hours: 11 am – 7 pm / closed on Tuesdays
