Piranesi Unbound

(Hardback)

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Why Piranesi's greatest works weren't his famous prints but rather the books for which he made them A draftsman, printmaker, architect, and archaeologist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) is best known today as the virtuoso etcher of the immersive and captivating Views of Rome and the darkly inventive Imaginary Prisons. Yet Carolyn Yerkes an

Reviews

"A handsome treatment of [an] unheralded aspect of Piranesis career."---Benjamin Riley, New Criterion
"Piranesi Unbound is a beautifully made book about a maker of beautiful books. Giambattista Piranesi (1720-78) is remembered mostly for his etchings, but art historians Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor make a strongand charmingly wonkishcase that his true medium was the bound volume. Theyre helped enormously by the designer Yve Ludwig, who strengthens every step of their argument with vivid closeups of the maestros work. Her gold-on-terracotta color scheme is the icing on the cake: Ms. Ludwig evokes Piranesis love for red chalk and Moroccan leather in a way that suggests the Roman genius might have a living heir."---Jackson Arn, Wall Street Journal
"[Piranesi Unbound is], an academic book [that] contains plenty of visual material exploring the Italian artists work, and . . . dives into the world of bookmaking."---Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Washington Post
"If you liked Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, you might want to look at Piranesi Unbound by Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor. It's an academic book, but it contains plenty of visual material exploring the Italian artist's work, and it dives into the world of bookmaking."---Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Independent
"Piranesi Unbound is a thoroughly researched and stimulating discursive study of Piranesi as a creator and seller of books. This will be a valuable book for students of Piranesi, book arts and patronage in Eighteenth-Century Rome."---Alexander Adams, Alexander Adams Art
"In Piranesi Unbound . . . Carolyn Yerkes and Heather HydeMinor show how books represented an alternative business model for [Piranesi], one that required technologies of production and routes of distribution that were different from those for prints. According to the authors, Piranesi the bookmaker has been shouldered aside in the literature by the suitable-for-framing hero of exhibitions and catalogues. Their Piranesi, by contrast, is to be found in libraries more often than in print cabinets. . . . This is a book lovers book."---Joseph Connors, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
"By treating Piranesis books as a distinct and specific medium, Yerkes and Hyde Minor draw attention to a feature of early modern publications that scholarship rarely fully acknowledges: their inherent instability and openness. From Piranesi Unbound, the book emerges as a site of a continuous reconfiguration of content and printed matter, and this over the entire course of its life: from its conception, when plates are reused and content is cribbed, over its production and sale, when pages and fascicules are combined, bound and personalised, to its distribution and dispersal in collections of books and prints. . . . By casting Piranesi primarily as a bookmaker, Piranesi Unbound begins to liberate his work from his overbearing presence in its interpretation."---Maarten Delbeke, Architectural History
"A scholarly and visually rich history that . . . should appeal to fans of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. . . . A beautiful book about books."---John Hill, A Daily Dose of Architecture
"Beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated . . . the book is a testament to the kind of scholarship Piranesi stood for."---Richard Calis, International Journal of the Classical Tradition
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Piranesi Unbound occupies a special place as a volume clearly aligned with the material turn" of art history. The coauthors, experts on architectural drawings and prints, are implicitly and productively critical of the canonical type of art historical research, concentrating specifically on what classical art history has regarded as parergathe technical, material, and economic aspects of artistic production.

Author Bio

Carolyn Yerkes is associate professor of early modern architecture at Princeton University and the author of Drawing after Architecture. Heather Hyde Minor is professor of art history at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Piranesis Lost Words and The Culture of Architecture in Enlightenment Rome.