Vernet incontra Piranesi: MARSHALL VERNET

Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art presents Vernet incontra Piranesi (Vernet meets Piranesi), a compelling photographic project by Marshall Vernet, opening to the public on Thursday, May 14, 2026, at the gallery’s historic premises at Via Margutta 54, Rome.

The exhibition unfolds as a visual dialogue between past and present, paying tribute to Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his celebrated 18th-century series Le Vedute di Roma. His powerful and visionary engravings have shaped the image of the Eternal City for centuries. Today, Vernet’s contemporary gaze takes up this legacy, reinterpreting it through a rigorous and evocative black-and-white photographic language that emphasizes the monumentality and timeless breath of Roman architecture.

Vernet Meets Piranesi is not merely a reinterpretation, but a true act of visual translation—a bridge between eras in which historical memory intertwines with contemporary perception. Characterized by tonal depth and formal precision, Vernet’s images engage in a subtle dialogue with the spirit of the original engravings, presenting a Rome suspended between permanence and transformation.

Based in New York, the artist has selected thirty subjects from Piranesi’s works, capturing the same locations within today’s urban context. Each photograph is paired with a reproduction of the corresponding engraving, printed on the same cotton photographic paper, establishing a material and visual continuity between the two series.

The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to rediscover the Eternal City through a renewed perspective, where great tradition meets contemporary sensibility. Long dedicated to the promotion of 19th- and early 20th-century works, Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art only occasionally engages with contemporary art. Projects such as Vernet Meets Piranesi represent rare and thoughtful forays beyond the gallery’s usual chronological scope, selected for their profound connection to tradition and art history.

is a photographer and visual artist whose work stands out for its refined balance between classical tradition and contemporary sensibility. After an initial career as an advertising director, he developed a photographic language in black and white distinguished by tonal depth, compositional rigor, and strong cinematic impact. His explorations have taken him around the world in search of evocative landscapes and visually striking locations, often tied to the imagery of cinema. In this field, he collaborated extensively with director Tony Scott as a location consultant, contributing to the production of iconic films such as Déjà Vu, The Fan, Enemy of the State, and Domino. His artistic practice now lies at the intersection of photographic tradition and contemporary visual culture, producing images that serve as bridges between memory and modernity.