Piranesi – Speaking Ruins

Piranesi’s oeuvre includes more than 1,000 graphic works. His best-known graphic series are Vedute di Roma and Carceri d’invenzione. Both series are represented in this exhibition, which includes 16 graphic prints from the Sinebrychoff Art Museum’s collections.

  • 16.2.–27.5.2018
Tickets: with a museum ticket
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen.

The great Italian graphic master Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78) did not originally plan to become a professional artist. He initially studied to be an architect before moving on to graphic art. Piranesi’s wide-ranging education, curious nature and powerful imagination, combined with his technical skill in graphics, led to unprecedented results. Piranesi created completely new visions of familiar sites in Rome – as well as a new way to depict landscapes.

In addition to graphic works, the exhibition features a video projection in which the Carceri d’invenzione series has been converted into a nearly tangible real-life space though 3D modelling technology. Watching the video has been described as ‘entering Piranesi’s mind’.