Sir John Soane鈥檚 Museum, London, until 31 May
When does restoration work become downright forgery? A new exhibition at Sir John Soane鈥檚 Museum in London is full of pieces that purport to be by the 18th-century Italian artist and etcher, Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Their date of manufacture: 2010.
The works are by Factum Arte, an Italian design company that straddles the worlds of museum conservation and contemporary art. Right now they are printing and sculpting a meticulous life-size facsimile of Tutankhamun鈥檚 tomb, to take visitor pressure off the original. They have also collaborated with artists like Marc Quinn and Anish Kapoor, and they use the software tools Hollywood employs for many of its special effects.
Advertisement
Sited in Soane鈥檚 famously cramped museum of antiquarian curiosities, the exhibition is called Diverse Maniere after one of Piranesi鈥檚 most famous collections of engravings, Diverse maniere d鈥檃dornare i cammini, published in 1769. Soane, the son of a bricklayer, was just 25 when he met Piranesi. He ended up the leading neoclassical architect and antiquary of his day, and a leading champion of Piranesi鈥檚 style.
Fantastical forms
The exhibits show Factum Arte exploring the middle ground between serious restoration and pure fantasy. They have worked from Piranesi鈥檚 etchings of ancient Roman artefacts and created life-size, three-dimensional sculptures, realising forms that previously only existed on the page. Among the highlights are a teapot combining the forms of a shell, a bee and a tortoise; a wildly outsize candlestick and a tripod made of brass cats.
Assembled using the CAD package ZBrush, the exhibits were prototyped using the largest stereolithographic printers in Europe, then assembled using more familiar technologies like routing, milling and laser cutting.
What would Piranesi have made of all this? Future shock aside, he would probably have taken it in his stride. He was not precious about his work, and anyway, he frequently gave in to the temptation to improve upon his originals, considering it part of his role as an artist.
The subtitle of the exhibition is 鈥淔antasy and Excess鈥�, but as one exhibit label bravely declares, Piranesi鈥檚 exuberance 鈥� stretching, simplifying and 鈥渃orrecting鈥� his ancient models 鈥� was 鈥渂ased not on misunderstanding the past but its opposite鈥�. In other words, the more Piranesi knew of the antiquities he collected, sold and copied, the more his own ideas found a place in his restoration work.
Roman fabrication
By an act of parliament in 1833, Soane bequeathed to the UK his museum, one consciously modelled on Piranesi鈥檚 workshop in Rome. Even so, Soane the enthusiast was aware of the risks of excessive 鈥渞estoration鈥�. He once took Piranesi鈥檚 views of imaginary and actual Roman ruins and antiquities and used them to build his own 鈥渞uins鈥� at his country villa, Pitzhanger Manor in west London.
He then wrote to friends in which he described their 鈥渄iscovery鈥� in his garden with such exquisite logic that the site appeared to hold an entire 鈥� and entirely fictitious 鈥� Roman temple.
Soane would have loved today鈥檚 scanning technologies: they are incredibly precise, so it is easy to become obsessed with precisely reproducing the past. At the same time, our modelling tools are flexible enough that we can realise our wildest visual fantasies.
Wander away from the exhibition鈥檚 two small rooms and into the museum proper, and you sense that Piranesi the artist and Soane the curator were cut from the same cloth: learned and fantastical; sincere and playful.
Factum Arte鈥檚 artists aspire to the same sort of learned playfulness. Take a look at the griffins that form the legs of that brass Pompeian altar. The digital artist鈥檚 鈥渞estoration鈥� faithfully reproduces the elongated limbs of Piranesi鈥檚 etching. Look closely at the faces, though, and you鈥檒l see something odd. A joke. A signature.
Each one is smiling a Mona Lisa smile.
3D printing and CAD software put flesh on Piranesi鈥檚 2D inspirations (Image: Alicia Guirao, Factum-Arte)
