Opening on May 14, 2026 in the spaces of Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art, in Rome, is the exhibition Vernet meets Piranesi, a photographic project by New York-based artist Marshall Vernet (New York City, 1956) dedicated to a comparison with one of the most famous engraving series of 18th-century Europe , Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Views of Rome. The exhibition, set up in the gallery’s historic venue at 54 Via Margutta and open until June 5, offers a dialogue between contemporary photography and the engraving tradition through 30 images made by Vernet in the places immortalized by the Venetian artist more than two centuries ago. The opening of the exhibition is scheduled for Thursday, May 14, 2026, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the gallery’s spaces at Via Margutta 54, Rome.
The project starts precisely from Piranesi’s famous views, works that have contributed decisively to the construction of the visual imagination of the capital, imposing a monumental and scenic idea of the eternal city destined to influence generations of travelers, artists and scholars. Vernet retraces the same places observed by Piranesi, translating them into a black-and-white photographic series that focuses on tonal intensity, formal precision and the centrality of urban architecture.
The exhibition builds a direct comparison between two different languages and two different ways of representing urban space. Contemporary photographs are in fact placed side by side with reproductions of the original engravings, printed on the same cotton photographic paper used for Vernet’s works. A choice that establishes a material and visual continuity between the images and accentuates the relationship between past and present at the center of the entire exhibition project.
The path thus relates Piranesi’s visionary Rome to the contemporary city observed by Vernet, bringing out permanences, transformations and changes in the urban fabric. In the American artist’s photographs, the monumentality of Roman buildings and architecture is rendered through a rigorous language, characterized by strong contrasts and a construction of the image that recalls, albeit with different tools, the perspective tension and sense of grandeur characteristic of 18th-century engravings.
According to the project approach, the dialogue between the two series concerns the relationship with historical memory and contemporary perception of the city. Indeed, the images created by Vernet show a Rome suspended between continuity and change, where the places fixed by Piranesi maintain their recognizability even within a profoundly transformed urban context. The exhibition also represents a rare opening to the contemporary for Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art, a gallery historically oriented toward works between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
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| In Rome, Marshall Vernet's photographs dialogue with Piranesi's Vedute |
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