Paestum was originally a Greek colony called Poseidonia (in honor of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea the Romans called the same god, Neptune). ![]() (Photo: Courtesy of the Trustees of Sir John Soane’s Museum) Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Temple of Neptune, Looking Southwest (Study for plate X of the Différentes vues de Pesto) (ca. In a vitrine are two prints that were made from two of these drawings, but the real excitement is the drawings. This is so not only because the prints were made after the artist’s death by his son, Francesco, but also because the drawings are so much fresher, so much richer – executed, as they are, not with scratches on a plate, but in brown ink and wash over chalk, with all the lustrous layering and detail that this method affords. ![]() ![]() The current show at the Morgan is different. On its walls are hung 15 good-sized drawings (all about 24” x 36”) made by Piranesi, in the year before his death, of the relatively well-preserved remains of the three Greek Doric temples at Paestum, a seaside town some 60 miles south of Naples. Nearly every art lover, at one time or another, has been exposed to the etchings of Piranesi (1720-1778), the great Italian draftsman and printmaker. Most likely, what he or she best remembers is the bizarre “Carceri” (Prisons), a series of huge, very dark, and threatening subterranean vaults with strange stairways and peculiar machinery.
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