Giovanni Battista Piranesi Collection

The Piranesi collection consists of 1048 engraved plates and 187 text plates, sourced from the Royal Chalcography in Rome (as evidenced by the affixed stamp). It includes engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his son, Francesco.

This heritage is to be understood in relation to the activities carried out by Carlo Alberto Petrucci, Director of the Chalcography from 1933 to 1960. Before the war, he continued the Institute's traditional practice of making donations to public bodies, distributing numerous prints to furnish the State's peripheral offices. The collection destined for Catania, sent specifically to Francesco Fichera, Director of the Institute of Ornament and Architecture at the University of Catania, was largely kept within that same Institute.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Venice, 1720 - Rome, 1778) was an engraver, architect, and architectural theorist. He spent the early years of his life in Venice, where he began his technical-engineering and artistic training. In 1740, he traveled to Rome as a draftsman under the pontificate of Benedict XIV and remained there for the rest of his life, deeply fascinated by the wonders of the city.

Three rooms are dedicated to the Artist: the first room of the tour illustrates his apprenticeship phase, characterized by highly geometric compositions, precise in their technique and in the use of line and perspective, the rules of which he followed meticulously. In the second room, some engravings are exhibited from the period when Piranesi approached Vedutism, an artistic movement that developed in Italy at the end of the 17th century, focusing on the objective and scientific representation of the landscape. The third room is dedicated to his most famous work, the Imaginary Prisons (Carceri d’invenzione), as well as to his restoration of ancient objects and the design of furnishing elements (designs for fireplaces, candelabras, table clocks, vases, etc.).