Middlebury College Museum of Art presents 'Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Visions of Grandeur,' an exhibition showcasing the 18th-century Italian printmaker, architect, designer, and antiquities dealer. The show features prints, drawings, a book, a map, and a recently acquired sculpture drawn from Middlebury's collections, augmented by loans from the Yale University Art Gallery, the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, and private collections. Curated by architectural history professor Pieter Broucke, the exhibition includes label texts researched by Middlebury students in a January 2025 curatorial lab course.
The exhibition matters because it recontextualizes Piranesi as a pivotal figure bridging the Rococo and Enlightenment, highlighting his influence beyond printmaking—as a tastemaker, polemicist, and proto-archaeologist who took creative liberties with classical antiquity. By placing his work within the cultural debates of his time, the show underscores how Piranesi's visionary ideas about antiquity, nature, and the artist's role continue to shape our understanding of art and history.