Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, from "Carceri d'invenzione" (Imaginary Prisons)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi Italian
Publisher Giovanni Bouchard Italian

Not on view

In the rough and bold etchings of the Carceri, Piranesi achieved the immediacy of a drawn sketch in print. The low viewpoint and the small size of the figures emphasize the immensity of these invented spaces, based on stage prisons rather than real ones. The spatial anomalies were meant not to be logical but to express vastness and strength.

Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, from "Carceri d'invenzione" (Imaginary Prisons), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, Mogliano Veneto 1720–1778 Rome), Etching, engraving, sulphur tint or open bite, burnishing; first state of four (Robison)

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