Piranesi's Complete Engravings Shown in Bassano del Grappa

A comprehensive exhibition at Bassano del Grappa presents for the first time the entire corpus of Giambattista Piranesi's engravings held in the city's Biblioteca civica and museum print cabinet. Curated by Chiara Casarin and Pierluigi Panza, the show brings together the famous Vedute di Roma, the volumes of Antichità Romane, and the complete 16-plate series Carceri d'invenzione on loan from the Fondazione Cini in Venice. The exhibition opens with the colophon from Piranesi's Lettere di Giustificazione, featuring an uroboros symbol, and includes a 2010 film by Grégoire Dupond for Factum Arte that reconstructs the Carceri spaces in 3D. At the entrance, a contemporary work by Luca Pignatelli, Icons Unplugged. Veduta del Castello dell’Acqua Felice, created specifically for the show, juxtaposes the immortality of engraving with the decay of masonite panels recovered from a seaside restaurant. The exhibition highlights Piranesi's influence on figures like Peter Eisenman, who presented Piranesi Variations at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, and explores his paradoxical treatment of time as both linear destruction and circular renewal.