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Gianbattista Piranesi
Mozano di Mestre, Venice 1720 – 1778 Rome
Title plate to
Carceri d’Invenzione di G. Battista Piranesi Archit. Vene
Title plate to
Carceri d’Invenzione di G. Battista Piranesi Archit. Vene
Carceri d’Invenzione (Imaginery Prisons) by G. Battista Piranesi, Venetian Architect
Pl. I of the Carceri
Robison 29 vi/ix
542 x 414 mm
Original etching, c1745-65.
The plate signed.
Impression in the sixth state,
with the Roman number I in the top left corner.
Before the heavier darkening of the chains
at the lower left (one of the motifs added for the second edition).
A lifetime impression, on heavy laid Bracciano paper watermarked with a lily in a double circle
with B above (Robison 36) dating from mid-1760’s.
Usual horizontal central fold, supported verso.
Time-stained.
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Additional
Information about the Print
The Carceri
Among Piranesi’s earliest plates, perhaps begun in Venice during his two year return to the city, 1645-47, were the first states of fourteen of the Carceri. Capricci inventions very much related to his Venetian origins and early theatrical stage training. The first edition was published for Piranesi by Bouchard & Gravier in Rome, in three issues between 1749 and 1760, with the title Invenzioni capric di Carceri.
Early in the 1760’s and in the following years Piranesi reworked the plates extensively through a succession of states, influenced by his response to Roman architecture, making them darker, and introducing dramatic new motifs, related to punishment and torture, into their composition. He etched two further plates and published the series with the title Carceri d’Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). This second edition, which appeared in three successive issues between 1761 and the early 1770’s, was published by Piranesi himself, after his move to new large premises in the Palazzo Tomati. (And there were later editions to follow.)
Of his architectural fantasies, Piranesi commented
The speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings could never have succeeded in conveying.
Prints from The Carceri in this exhibition are:
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