Though Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) is perhaps best known for the fractured, haunting etchings of imaginary prison he produced in a 14-plate series titled “Invenzioni capric di Carceri (Capricious Inventions of Prisons)” (1749–50), the real scope of his artistic output — which included designs for architecture, decorative objects, interiors, and even important critical writings — is less visible. And the impact of his radical aesthetic theories based on compositions cut and pasted from various ancient influences remains largely misunderstood.

Curated by Sarah E. Lawrence and John Wilton-Ely, “Piranesi as Designer,” at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, puts on display a large number of the Italian master’s etchings and drawings, from well-known images to rarely seen works, as well as examples of the decorative arts objects he designed. It is an attempt to lay bare the various facets of Piranesi’s output and to re-examine his career from a different angle. And, as the title suggests, this new angle is Piranesi’s relationship to and influence on design, where design is defined more broadly as the fertility of invention rather than the tidiness of drawing.

Piranesi’s work was a direct product of the ideas that defined the 18th-century Enlightenment — and its artistic counterpart, Neoclassicism — which encouraged a new appreciation of classical ideals. While influenced early in his career by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Venetian rococo style, it was Grand Tour Rome that would have the biggest effect on Piranesi’s ideas of design.

Emulating the earlier Roman artists’ penchant for incorporating interpretations of Greek art into their works, Piranesi also looked to antique sources for inspiration, drawing from Etruscan, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences. His early capricci and scherzo — both types of invented, fantastical drawings incorporating unorthodox juxtapositions of classical and contemporary elements — took this idea of a stylistic mash-up to extremes, earning him the reputation as both a maverick and a madman.

A capricci such as the pen, brown ink, and ink wash “Architectural Fantasy with Monumental Portico Before a Palace” (c. 1763) shows Piranesi challenging accepted pictorial rules. The radical shifts in scale, flattening and compression of images, and ambiguous spatial relationships he employs are all

harbingers of the compositions that would later become a hallmark of 20th-century modernism. Looking at this work, it seems Piranesi considered his drawings less as blueprints for realizable physical structures, and more as the ideal medium through which to transmit his unique statements on design. In fact, despite minor commissions, the only fully realized architectural plan to see the light of day during his lifetime was the reconstruction of Order of Malta’s church, Santa Maria del Priorato.

In 1769, Piranesi published a volume of designs for interiors and decorative objects in a type of design manifesto known by its shortened title, Diverse maniere. Almost 10 years later, in 1778, he published another series devoted to decorative objects titled Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcophagi. Sketches and prints from these two volumes are on display at Cooper-Hewitt, along with a few pieces influenced by or made after these designs, such as a settee and clock by Thomas Hope, and the Doncaster Race Cup by Rebecca Emes and Edward Barnard. These drawings and prints show Piranesi applying his ideas of appropriated antique motifs to the realm of decorative arts. His instincts favor the everything-andthe-kitchen-sink mentality when it comes to these objects, while his training as an architect provides much-needed structure to objects that otherwise threaten to crumble under an abundance of decoration. But though most of his decorative art objects are hit or miss, their inclusion helps round out an understanding of Piranesi as a proponent for visual eclecticism in design.

On view are two rare pieces made during Piranesi’s lifetime, both of which are two of his more successful designs: a Carrara marble chimneypiece designed in 1769 for John Hope (Thomas’s father), and a carved and gilt wood pier table designed in 1768 for Cardinal Giovanni Battista Rezzonico. The John Hope chimneypiece in particular embodies Piranesi’s use of multiple antique motifs because it incorporates original antique elements, such as the architrave, into the finished product.

In the final room of the exhibition, major contemporary architects discuss Piranesi’s influence on their work. Robert A. M. Stern, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Michael Graves, Daniel Libeskind, and Peter Eisenman all have works on display, with examples by Piranesi hanging next to them, highlighting his influence on their work. Here, Piranesi’s lessons of experimenting with form’s malleability, exerting creative license to open up fantastical possibilities, and using many sources in a single composition is seen as the natural legacy inherited by these contemporaries. Judging from this exhibition, it is not too strong a statement to consider Piranesi the first modern designer.

Until January 20 (2 E. 91st St. at Fifth Avenue, 212-849-8400).