New Life in Old Plates: Reuse and Revival in Piranesi’s Printmaking

Explore how Piranesi revisited and transformed his prints, shaping his artistic identity and influence. Maya Carden, an Arthur Greenberg Curatorial Fellow at the Kemper Art Museum and master’s student in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, will discuss a selection of prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Part of the Museum’s permanent collection, Piranesi’s series of imaginary prisons, the Carceri d’invenzione, includes plates from both the original 1749 edition and the later, reworked 1761 edition. By examining these prints in relation to one another, Carden will explore Piranesi’s innovations in medium and style over the course of his career in Rome and consider the artist’s practice of revisiting and transforming his own works as he established a unique artistic identity. Through this close examination of Piranesi’s work across several decades of his career, Carden will investigate the artist’s role within Roman Neoclassicism and his influence on the development of late eighteenth-century Romanticism. About the Speaker Maya Carden is a second-year master’s student in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. Her research interests include artistic identity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printmaking. She is currently writing her qualifying paper on the influence of Piranesi on Gothic horror in Rome in the eighteenth century. She earned her BA in art history with honors from the University of Minnesota in 2025. Maya also works as a fellow in the Digital Art History Lab at WashU and serves as an assistant in instruction for “Introduction to Western Art, Architecture and Design.” New Perspectives New Perspectives talks are opportunities for established and emerging scholars to conduct research and give a public talk on the Museum’s collection. The talks are given by faculty and graduate students in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and focus on one or more works from the collection, aligning with the speakers’ own expertise and disciplinary interests.