Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his Workshop: Two newly identified Albums at Karlsruhe

2014年，在德国西南部的卡尔斯鲁厄国家公园有了一项惊人的发现。两本包含297幅图画的相册，以前被认为是新古典主义建筑师弗里德里希·温布伦纳(Friedrich Weinbrenner，1766-1826年)的作品，可以重新归因于罗马建筑师和绘图师乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·皮拉内西(Giovanni Battista Piranesi，1720-78年)及其工作室的一些合作者，并从法证上将其联系起来，在此之前，人们对他们知之甚少。支持归因于皮拉内西工作室背景的证据(论文、技术、水印、铭文以及与皮拉内西已发表作品的总体关系)，而且与皮拉内西本人的单张归属问题无关，现在可以被认为足以安全地支持这种广泛的主张，最初是在Georg Kabierske 2015年的文章中提出的。从现在起，我们正在处理的东西可以被安全地引入文献(以及巴登-符腾堡州的遗产登记)，作为“卡尔斯鲁厄食人鱼专辑”。在最初的两个项目年之后，在广泛的调查和与项目相关的倡议之后，例如在卡尔斯鲁厄举行的国际会议(2018年4月)和在纽约艾弗里和摩根图书馆的两个学习日之后，在向几乎所有国际专家提交了关于谁恰好是18世纪罗马最重要的(如果不是没有挑战的)大师乔瓦尼·巴蒂斯塔·皮拉内西的发现之后，我们的情况如何？因此，焦点开始从对专辑及其内容的首次深入分析转移到与卡尔斯鲁厄发现提出的艺术技术和背景问题有关的更广泛的调查上，卡尔斯鲁厄发现继续成为人们对皮拉内西作品重新产生兴趣和接受的中心。该项目可能会产生大量新的科学成果，涉及一个调查领域，该领域紧张地预计这位艺术家将在2020年迎来第三个百年诞辰。因此，根据第一轮非常广泛的断断续续的发现和结果，这一轮融资申请侧重于三个密切相关的主要调查领域：a)背景(Frank/Maronnie和Kabierske)，b)艺术技术(BRück le/Krämer)，c)昆斯勒·卡尔斯鲁厄(Morét)印刷和绘图部的画册清单。

In 2014, an altogether spectacular discovery was made at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe in the South-West of Germany. Two albums containing 297 drawings, previously believed to be the work of the Neo-Classical architect Friedrich Weinbrenner (1766–1826) could be re-attributed and forensically connected with the Roman architect and draughtsman Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78) as well as to some of his workshop collaborators, about whom relatively little had been known prior to this discovery. The evidence in support of an attribution to Piranesi’s workshop context (papers, techniques, watermarks, inscriptions and overall relationships with Piranesi’s published works) and moreover independently of the question of the attribution of individual sheets to Piranesi himself, can now be considered sufficient to securely uphold such a wide-ranging claim, first made in Georg Kabierske’s article of 2015. What we are dealing with can from now on be securely introduced into the literature (and patrimonial register of Baden-Württemberg) as the “Karlsruhe Piranesi Albums”.The Albums are first of all “raw material” for any further investigation. Where do we stand after the initial two project years, after extensive investigations and project-related initiatives such as an international conference at Karlsruhe (April 2018) and two study days at the Avery and Morgan Libraries of New York, thus after having presented the find to nearly all international specialists of who happens to be the foremost if not unchallenged master of eighteenth-century Rome, Giovanni Battista Piranesi? The focus is thus beginning to shift from a first-time, in-depth analysis of the albums and their contents to a much wider investigation in relation to the art-technological and contextual questions raised by the Karlsruhe find, which continues to present itself at the centre of a renewed interest in and reception of Piranesi’s work. The project is likely to produce a lot of new scientific out-put in relation to a field of investigation that nervously anticipates the third centenary of the artist’s birth in 2020. Hence this application for another round of financing, based on the very extensive intermittent finds and results of the first round, focuses on the three closely interrelated principal areas of investigation: a) the contextual (Frank/Maronnie and Kabierske), b) the art technological (Brückle/Krämer) and c) the inventory of the albums at the Prints and Drawings Department of the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (Morét).