#Piranesi prison full#

Image courtesy of Dietmar Katz / Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlinīefore creating his fictions, Piranesi had first mastered the study of surviving architecture. Sketch of an altar for the Church of Santa Maria del Priorato on Rome’s Aventine Hill. Enthralled by antiquity, he chose the medium of etching and printmaking, which seemed to embody within it the passage of time, giving even his invented works the sense of having a past. While he is buried at the Church of St Mary on the Aventine, a minor treasure he worked to restore between 17, his genius lay in print, specifically in the exploration of the realms outside extant architecture the unbuilt, the demolished and the derelict.Ī Venetian by birth and outlook, he belonged to the capriccio tradition of imaginary, or composite, cityscapes. While proudly declaring himself an architect, Piranesi built very little. The latter was an artist and an architect a Venetian and a Roman the last of the Ancients and the first of the moderns a visionary who studiously documented imperial ruins while predicting the ‘dark Satanic mills’, in Blake’s words, of the coming Industrial Revolution a prophet who spent his days recreating the past a designer of heaven and hell.

Often depicted with two faces gazing in opposite directions, this was a god who reflected Piranesi’s nature.

Its colossal arches hinted at the nature of the Roman god to whom it was dedicated – Janus, the god of gateways, journeys and change. These etchings were destined to influence countless scenic designers in preparing their sets of dungeons and torture chambers.In 1748, Giovanni Battista Piranesi depicted the Temple of Janus overgrown and in a state of disrepair. They may be seen in two states: the first more freely drawn and lightly etched, the final one (to which this illustration belongs) reworked with deep, dark lines and more ominous interiors. They were reissued about sixteen years later. Piranesi was twenty-two when he composed his sixteen fantasies.

De Quincey never saw Piranesi's plates, but obviously was very moved by the verbal description of them given by his friend, the poet and essayist Coleridge. A famous description comes from De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. It is believed that during his residence in Venice he also knew and studied the etchings of Tiepolo.Ĭertainly Piranesi's most often discussed prints are in his etched Prison series, the Carceri d'Innenzione. From Giuseppe Vasi he had learned etching and engraving, and most of his plates are a mixture of these two techniques. In 1831 Francesco Piranesi did, however, publish an account of his father's career, part of which reads: 'In an age of frivolities, he boldly and singlehanded dared to strike out for himself on a new road to fame: and in dedicating his talent to the recording and illustrating from ancient writers the records of former times, he met with a success as great as it deserved, combining, as he did, all that was beautiful in art with all that was interesting in the remains of antiquity.'īorn in Venice, Piranesi yearned for Rome, and there he lived and worked most of his lifetime, dedicating himself to studying, measuring, and drawing its architectural treasures. His two sons knew this manuscript and, with additions based on their recollections, prepared their own version, which was submitted to an English publisher.

#Piranesi prison full#

Giovanni Battista Piranesi not only produced an incredible number of etchings and engravings, but is known to have written an autobiography which was reputedly as full of swashbuckling incidents as that of Benvenuto Cellini.