Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Pier with a Lamp (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 41 x 53 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Pier with a Gothic Arch (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching on white laid paper, dimensions not known, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY. Prisoners on a Projecting Platform is next, after which both editions have two prints, The Arch with Shell Ornament, and The Well. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Prisoners on a Projecting Platform (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 41 x 53 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.Īfter that comes The Giant Wheel. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Giant Wheel (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching and engraving, 56 x 41 cm, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary. The Drawbridge is next, and in both editions is followed by The Staircase with Trophies. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Drawbridge (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 41 x 55 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Perspective of Arches, with a Smoking Fire follows. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Perspective of Arches, with a Smoking Fire (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching with engraving and sulfur tint, first state, 54 x 40 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN. The Grand Piazza is next, and in the second edition was followed by an additional plate normally titled The Lion Bas-Reliefs. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Grand Piazza (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 53 x 41 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. The Round Tower is the first plate in the first edition, but in the second was preceded by an additional plate normally known as The Man on the Rack. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), The Round Tower (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 53 x 41 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. ![]() The first, shown above, credits the publisher in its inscription, but Piranesi was sufficiently well known by the second edition to give his own name. The title page differs considerably between the two editions. Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Title (Imaginary Prison) (c 1745-50), etching, 53 x 41 cm, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands. The visionary British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) referred explicitly to them forming a part of his creative process. They have since been reprinted in many different editions, and are believed to have formed inspiration for Gothic-Romantic and Surrealist artists in all media. Those were published in a second edition in 1761. In about 1760 he revised those originals, adjusting some of their projections to form impossible geometries, and adding two further etchings. The first, in 1750, consisted of 14 first state prints. These engravings were published in two editions during his lifetime. Their style is far freer and more sketchy than his normally tight and precise marks in his published engravings of Roman antiquities, and from some of the more detailed descriptions, he used chemical methods of toning too. Inspired perhaps by flights of fancy from trying to reconstruct old ruins in his mind, he must have given his imagination free rein. I like to think that they originated in the doodles of an architect who had a particular interest in the classical ruins of Rome. ![]() Piranesi is thought to have started work on this series in about 1745. Those extraordinary prints are the subject of this article. ![]() In the first article about the art of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), to celebrate today, the three-hundredth anniversay of his birth, I looked at his career and works, except for his series of etchings of Imaginary Prisons which he made between about 1745-50.
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