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• #Carceri d invenzione piranesi series#

The reworked plates are even darker and more complex, with added details and inscriptions. About ten years later, Piranesi reworked these plates and added two new images to the series.

#Carceri d invenzione piranesi series#

Spatial anomalies and ambiguities abound in all the images of the series they were not meant to be logical but to express the vastness and strength that Piranesi experienced in contemplating Roman architecture. GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI (1720-1778) Staircase with Trophies, Plate VIII from: Carceri d'Invenzione etching, circa 1749-50, watermark Fleur-de-Lys in single Circle, a fine, bright and luminous, early impression of the first state (of five), First Edition, first or second Issue, before signature and number, with wide margins, a hard horizontal central crease mainly visible in the margins. Actual prisons in the Italy were tiny dungeons. The fourteen plates depicting prisons - probably Piranesi's best-known series - were described on their title page as ‘capricious inventions.’ These structures, their immensity emphasized by the low viewpoint and the diminutive figures, derive from stage prisons rather than real ones. Piranesi studied architecture, engineering and stage design, and his first plans for buildings reflect his training combined with the tremendous impact of classical Roman architecture. Dante’s epic poem Divina Commedia is often mentioned as a source of inspiration for Piranesi when he was imagining his dark and tortuous prison scenes. Rome was the inspiration for and subject of most of his etchings that number over a thousand. Initially published anonymously in 1750, Piranesi reissued his collection of prison prints Carceri d’Invenzione under his own name in 1761.

A native of Venice, Piranesi went to Rome at age twenty and where he remained for the remainder of his life.