Sarah Vowles, the curator of the exhibition, points out that it is unlikely many of these drawings were made on site and that Piranesi was instead pulling such ideas from “his great mental storehouse or library.”Īnother fantastical architectural scene shows Piranesi’s mastery of depicting space–a skill that defines many of his engravings. One drawing shows a domed structure based on Rome’s pantheon spliced with what appears to be the dome of St Peter’s basilica, although neither is an exact reproduction. Many of the architectural scenes do not faithfully reproduce particular buildings, but instead borrow different elements and combine them in new settings. There is a sense of freedom to Piranesi’s compositions in their content and execution. Indeed, Piranesi went against the common practice of making highly-detailed drawings for transfer onto copperplates (the method of engraving), remarking that, “if my drawing was finished, my plate would become only a copy.” While some are preparatory studies that were later worked up as engravings, most of the sketches are not directly relatable to known finished pieces. The majority of the drawings are architectural scenes. We see the influence that Piranesi’s training as a set designer for the theatre in Venice had on his approach to perspective vistas, and the subsequent transformative impact that his move to Rome had on the subject matter of his work. On display are examples which span Piranesi’s working life from the 1740s to 1770s. While the most recognizable of Piranesi’s works are the evocative prints of Roman ruins in 18th century landscapes and the haunting etchings of grotesque prisons, the British Museum exhibition instead focuses on 51 ink and chalk drawings in its collection, highlighting his expertise as a draftsman. This year is the 300th anniversary of Piranesi’s birth and to mark the occasion the British Museum in London is holding an exhibition, Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity. But not all architects can build, and Piranesi’s brilliance was on paper. The façade is overloaded with decorative details that break the grace of the architecture and confuse the eye. This building, the Church of Santa Maria del Priorato on the Aventine Hill in Rome, the monastery of the Knights of Malta, is not a masterpiece. Although he consistently signed his work ‘architetto,’ he is famous for his engravings of the monuments of ancient Rome, and in fact constructed only one building in his entire career. "Invenzioni capric di carceri: The Prisons of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778)," Getty Research Journal 2 (2010): 153.ġ7Marchesano, “Invenzioni capric di carceri,” 151.Giovanni Battista Piranesi was the greatest printmaker of the 18th century. 17ġ4Lucchi, Lowe, Pavanello, The arts of Piranesi, 125.ġ5Marchesano, Louis. The prisons of I Carceri stand out as one of his major achievements. For example, in Italy, a popular representation of the sublime involved depictions of Mount Vesuvius erupting, a terrific and devastating event. The images presented by these plates would have been deeply haunting to his audience as an expression of the sublime, a style founded in the emotion of terror which was becoming fashionable in the art world. 16 In these prints, Piranesi demonstrated an investment in a unique visual experience for the viewer, evidenced by the tug of war between light and shadow. No other prints by Piranesi force the eye to move so deeply inward and upward. Piranesi’s dabbling in stage design must have also been an influence in the invention of I Carceri, as the fantasy and narrative of such architecture is omnipresent. 15 The second edition of I Carceri was inspired by his obsession with archaeology and antiquity and was influenced by the impressions he gathered in Rome. I Carceri allowed Piranesi an experimental outlet with which he ventured into his interests of scale and monumentality. Piranesi betrays the rules of perspective and even hides important elements of the architecture itself when his etched lines fade into the edges of the paper. In I Carceri, Piranesi never presents an entire building, nor does he ever give enough information to distinguish the complete form of the structures, as in The Pier with Chains. In both pieces, there is a sense of cluttered and claustrophobic space, endlessly extending structures, and impossible structures. The Man on the Rack and The Pier with Chains, representative examples of I Carceri, both contain large cavities of space and gigantic pillars, buttresses, walls, and arches. 14 These pieces represented unrealistic architectural structures that have little to do with actual prisons. In I Carceri, Piranesi explored the possibilities of perspective and spatial illusion while pushing the medium of etching to its limits. Piranesi created the series of convoluted prison interiors, I Carceri, after being influenced by his upbringing in the printmaking scene in Venice.
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