In Bassano the visions and sublime dreams of Piranesi

BASSANO - His visions and his "sublime dreams" - as the writer Horace Walpole defined them, strongly recommending them to his students - and his "scenes ... unthinkable even in the Indies". And then "his palaces over bridges, temples on palaces" and his climbing "the sky with mountains of buildings". The genius of Giambattista Piranesi, "timeless architect", is at the center of a large and comprehensive exhibition in Bassano del Grappa from June 20 to October 19 on the occasion of the third centenary of his birth (1720). The incredible graphic power but also the restless onirism of the artist of Venetian origin but Roman by adoption, which has about 570 works in Bassano, is exhibited on the fourth and fifth floors of Palazzo Sturm, spaces intended for temporary exhibitions, inaugurated after the latest restoration campaign, with the exhibition of another giant of the world engraving, Albrecht Durer. The exhibition - curated by Chiara Casarin and Pierluigi Panza - offers all the graphic masterpieces of Giambattista Piranesi, heritage of the Bassano collections. A complete corpus that includes loose engravings and many others enclosed in volumes to which is added the complete series of the Prisons of Invention from the collections of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. "The heritage preserved in our Civic Museums does not cease to amaze us - explains Elena Pavan, mayor of Bassano del Grappa - the desire to open our archives and to enhance our hidden collections allows us now, for the first time in the history of our museums , to admire Piranesi 's graphic masterpieces and to grasp his artistic genius and his extraordinary skill in the engraving technique ". "Giambattista Piranesi. Timeless architect is the complete exhibition of Piranesian engravings preserved in Bassano - according to Chiara Casarin, curator of the exhibition - an exhibition that responds to the desire to exhibit to the public the treasures preserved in the press room and in the archives of the Library and which confirms , once again, how much the teaching of the ancients is alive in contemporary art ". "The exhibition that the Civic Museums of Bassano dedicate to the genius of Piranesi - adds the other curator Pierluigi Panza - testifies to an important progress in the study of the permanent collections of the city and allows to underline some clarifications on the biographical events of the artist and his family ". Two videos deepen the exhibition itinerary and narrate the success of Giambattista Piranesi abroad, the highlights of the artist's life starting from the discovery of the baptismal act: The Lumière Mystérieuse, written and directed by Massimo Becattini and Giovan Battista Piranesi 1720 -1778, created on the occasion of the great exhibition dedicated to the artist in 1978 by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice. To complete the film that Factum Arte made on the occasion of the exhibition The arts of Piranesi. Architect, engraver, antiquarian, landscape painter, designer, organized by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in 2010 and which reconstructs three-dimensional each environment of the 16 prisons tables. Draftsman, engraver, antiquarian and architect, Piranesi is considered to be the greatest exponent of 18th century Venetian engraving. Arriving in Rome in his twenties, he began the production of the famous Views of Rome, depicting classical ruins and ancient monuments, including those present in the collections of Bassano del Grappa. Creator of a single building, the church of Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome, has influenced the work of architects but also set designers, painters, poets and writers. Among the many Marguerite Yourcenar he wanted to dedicate a biography to him where, about the Prisons, he writes that it is "one of the most secret works that an eighteenth-century man has left us as a legacy".