Piranesi Roma Basilico

To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giambattista Piranesi (Venice, 1720 – Rome, 1778), the Fondazione Giorgio Cini is paying tribute to the artist in the exhibition “Piranesi Rome Basilico” in collaboration with the Archivio Gabriele Basilico.

Visitors will be able to admire some of Rome’s symbolic landmarks 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 the city by Gabriele Basilico, taken from the same viewpoint as the Piranesi. 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.