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The Round Tower, plate 3 from the second edition of Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons)
Giovanni Battista Piranesi1750, reworked 1761
- Attribution
- Giovanni Battista Piranesi Italian, 1720-1778
- Medium
- Etching, engraving, sulphur tint, and burnishing in black on ivory laid paper
- Physical dimensions
- Image: 54.2 × 41 cm (21 3/8 × 16 3/16 in.); Plate: 54.9 × 41.6 cm (21 5/8 × 16 7/16 in.); Sheet: 56.1 × 42.5 cm (22 1/8 × 16 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Joseph Brooks Fair Memorial Collection
CATALOGUE RECORD
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Source rights statement: Public domain
View the museum record ↗From the museum
In addition to dramatic views of Roman architecture, Giovanni Battista Piranesi created a series of prison interiors that were entirely invented. These vast, entangled passageways and cavernous chambers were first printed around 1750. Ten years later, Piranesi reworked the plates, heightening their ominous state in an implied critique of social injustice.
Description: Art Institute of Chicago · CC BY 4.0