Diverse Maniere: Piranesi, Fantasy and Excess

London, Sir John Soanes’ Museum
plus Mar, 07May, 31 2014

Sir John Soanes’ Museum has one of the richest holdings of graphic work by Piranesi and this exhibition, in collaboration with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, continues the exploration of Soane’s interest
in Piranesi. Diverse Maniere will focus on Piranesi’s engagement with the decorative arts. The displays will consist of meticulous threedimensional reproductions of the objects, such as coffee pots, chairs,
chimneypieces and antique candelabra, tripods and altars imagined by Piranesi in publications such as Diverse Maniere or Vasi, Candelabri, Cippi…, but never actually realised physically. Now, using the
latest scanning and three-dimensional printing technologies, Factum Arte has realised Piranesi’s vision as a designer. Bronze tripods, porphyry altars and marble candelabra will embellish the rooms of No
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whilst in the Soane Gallery a display of Piranesi’s related etchings and
explications of Factum Arte’s work will accompany the show. Surely, Sir John Soane, with his love of new technologies, his collections of plaster “reproductions” after the antique, and his fascination with Piranesi’s boundless imagination would have found this a particularly appropriate exhibition.