(Pietro Labruzzi portrait of Giovanni Battista Piranesi)
From August 19th to January 2016, a major exhibition of Venetian master Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s drawings will be on display at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Centre located at 328 Lomita Drive, Stanford. Fifteen exquisitely rendered drawings made in 1777 of three ancient Greek temples in Paestum, southern Italy will be featured. The Entitled Piranesi’s Paestum: Master Drawings Uncovered also includes prints and rare books of the period, that shed new light on this celebrated 18th-century artist’s working method and on the considerable impact of his oeuvre on 18th- and 19th-century architectural taste. The Cantor is the only West-Coast venue for this exhibition, which originated at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.
While Piranesi (1720-1778) is primarily known as the creator of such famous print series as the Vedute di Roma and especially the Carceri d'Invenzione, this exhibition focuses on some of his rare drawings. The Paestum drawings are Piranesi’s most extensive body of work devoted to a single topographical site.
(Piranesi’s Drawing of the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome)
The Cantor Arts Center is open Wednesday–Monday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., Thursday until 8 p.m. Admission is free. The Cantor is located on the Stanford campus, off Palm Drive at Museum Way. Parking is free after 4 p.m. weekdays and all day on weekends and major holidays. For more information all 650-723-4177 or visit museum.stanford.edu.