Aspects of Piranesi Essays on History, Criticism and Invention

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, a remarkable artist and outstanding engraver, was also an engineer, archeologist, architectural critic and theoretician and and art dealer.0The 2008 exhibition 'Piranesi. The print collection of Ghent university', staged in the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) of Ghent, Belgium, thematized and explored the works and activities of the Venetian entire range of Giambattista Piranesi. This book is the final outcome of a symposium on Piranesi held in the Museum on January 9, 2009 (organized by the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning of Ghent University, the Ghent Urban Studies Team (GUST), and the MSK). In this fully illustrated book a wide range of aspects of Piranesi's oeuvre and thinking are examined, with a particular focus, on one hand, on his polemical and theoretical works and texts and, on the other, on the visual and compositional strategies that formed the basis of his prints. Included are also three hitherto unpublished drawings by Piranesi, Clérisseau, and Lieven Cruyl. 0.