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Digital Collection

Piranesi on the Page

Princeton University Library was pleased to contribute its publications to a unique exhibit in the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery, telling the story of the book as the centerpiece of Piranesi’s artistic production. What did these volumes mean to Piranesi, who did they bring into his world, and how can the process of making them be understood throughout his career? As the central thread that connects all spheres of his enormous ambition, Piranesi’s books reveal how the artist became the foremost printmaker in eighteenth-century Europe.

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Born in Venice, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) came to Rome in 1740, seeking to become an architect. Finding no opportunities to build, he began to make paper monuments in the form of books. The pages he crafted became his most powerful and creative art form. 
Piranesi worked in many media, including sculpture, furniture, drawings, and architecture. But the single sustaining medium that he pursued throughout his career was the book. Piranesi created twelve volumes that combine text and images, and to make them he thought in units of pages. Making images and making texts were two separate processes, discrete enterprises that required different equipment and skills. Piranesi operated as a creator of prints, writer of texts, designer of pages--and sometimes as a publisher, dealer, and salesman. 
A DPUL online exhibition was also built as a companion to "Piranesi on the Page" - a 2021 exhibition in the Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery at Firestone Library.  Curated by Heather Hyde Minor,  Professor, University of Notre Dame and Carolyn Yerkes, Associate Professor, Princeton University.

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Princeton University Library claims no copyright governing this digital resource. It is provided for free, on a non-commercial, open-access basis, for fair-use academic and research purposes only. Anyone who claims copyright over any part of these resources and feels that they should not be presented in this manner is invited to contact Princeton University Library, who will in turn consider such concerns and make reasonable efforts to respond to such concerns.

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[Identification of item], [Sub-collection name (if applicable)], Piranesi on the Page Collection, Princeton University Library.

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