Art: Roman Visionary

Many of the people who swarmed through Turin's Civic Gallery of Modern Art last week brought magnifying glasses with them, for every detail in every etching and drawing in the show demanded the closest scrutiny. To the rest of the world, the works of Engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi are a familiar staple; his Views of Rome sometimes show up on the walls of U.S. dentists' waiting rooms. But to Italians he has always been an "artist for export"—an attitude that Professor Ferdinando Salamon, who helped put the Turin show together, blames on "a southern country's lack of interest in the contemplative...

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