Giovanni Battista
Piranesi
Subject
matter
CARCERI PLATE IV
- The smoking fire
The Prisons (Carceri d'invenzione or 'Imaginary Prisons') is a series of
16 prints produced in first and second states that show enormous subteranean
vaults with stairs and mighty machines. The artwork, in my opinion, gives the
impresion of solitude, of spirit trapped, chaos, but at the same time perfection. It is confusing, chaotic yet
perfectly ordered.
"The smoking
fire" generates contradictory feelings like fear and fascination. I think
that each of Piranesi Prison can make the viewer feel lost or trapped, trying
to figure the way out.
Unlike a typical
capriccio, these weren't created to appeal to the Grand Tourist and fully
expressed the imagination of the artist rather than being based on well known
monuments.
Technique
The fourteen plates of the Carceri, described on their title page as
"capricious inventions," are probably Piranesi's best-known series.
These structures, their immensity emphasized by the low viewpoint and the small
size of the figures, derive from stage prisons rather than real ones—Piranesi
had created an earlier prison fantasy (in his Prima Parte - First Part) that is closely
based on stage designs by Ferdinando Bibiena and Filippo Juvarra. 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, to which he remained in thrall throughout
his life. While elaborate theories have been developed to account for this
series, it has also been plausibly suggested that Piranesi chose an
architectural subject devoid of ornament and requiring little detail or
textural differentiation, so that he could isolate the issues of perspective
and spatial structure. In this series of variations on a theme, Piranesi
attacked his copperplates with a boldness and spontaneity unmatched in any
other work of his time. One of his goals seems to have been a thorough
exploration of the tools and techniques of the etching medium.
In "The smoking
fire", he used both burin and etching needle to scrape and scratch lines
of every depth and width, while the burnisher was used to soften lines and
create lighter patches. He created areas of gray throughout the plate by means
of shallow surface scratches that held a light film of ink. In other places he
applied acid directly to the plate in order to roughen it, resulting in
scattered black spots. The brightest highlight of the print has been achieved
by adding a resistant ground to an isolated spot before inking the plate—the
ground covers any etched lines in that area, as well as accidental scratches,
so that the area prints a pure white in the midst of a wide range of blacks and
grays.
Artist's career
Piranesi was born in
Mogliano Veneto, near Treviso, then part of the Republic of Venice. His
brother, Andrea introduced him to Latin and the ancient civilization, and later
he studied as an architect under his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, who was Magistrato
delle Acque, a Venetian engineer who specialized in excavation.
From 1740 he was in Rome
with Marco Foscarini, the Venetian envoy to the Vatican. He resided in the
Palazzo Venezia and studied under Giuseppe Vasi, who introduced him to the art
of etching and engraving. After his studies with Vasi, he collaborated with
pupils of the French Academy in Rome to produce a series of vedute (views) of
the city; his first work was Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive (1743),
followed in 1745 by Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna.
From 1743 to 1747 he
sojourned mainly in Venice where, according to some sources, he frequented
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. He then returned to Rome, where he opened a workshop
in Via del Corso. In 1748–1774 he created a long series of vedute of the city
which established his fame. In the meantime Piranesi devoted himself to the
measurement of many of the ancient edifices: this led to the publication of
Antichità Romane de' tempo della prima Repubblica e dei primi imperatori
("Roman Antiquities of the Time of the First Republic and the First
Emperors"). In 1761 he became a member of the Accademia di San Luca and
opened a printing facility of his own. In 1762 the Campo Marzio dell'antica
Roma collection of engravings was printed.
The following year he was
commissioned by Pope Clement XIII to restore the choir of San Giovanni in
Laterano, but the work did not materialize. In 1764 Piranesi started his sole
architectural works of importance, the restoration of the church of Santa Maria
del Priorato in the Villa of the Knights of Malta in Rome, where he was buried
after his death, in a tomb designed by Giuseppi Angelini.
In 1767 he was created a knight of the Golden Spur, which enabled him
henceforth to sign himself "Cav[aliere] Piranesi". In 1769 his
publication of a series of ingenious and sometimes bizarre designs for
chimneypieces, as well as an original range of furniture pieces, established
his place as a versatile and resourceful designer.[1] In 1776 he created his
famous Piranesi Vase, his best known work as a 'restorer' of ancient sculpture.
In 1777–78 Piranesi published Avanzi degli Edifici di Pesto, (Remains of the
Edifices of Paestum) a collection of views of Paestum.
He died in Rome in 1778 after a long illness and buried in the Church of
Santa Maria del Priorato, on the Aventine hill in Rome.
Considering this work was
created in the mid-eighteenth century, this is a far cry from the lighthearted
and decorative Rococo style which was now in favor.
This series of etchings went on to influence many other artists such as
the Romanticism movement, the Surrealists and M.C. Escher to name a few. Piranesi's other works of art are among my
favorites, but it is this series that sets him apart from other artists of his
time.
Links with own work
The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, Prima parte di Architettura e Prospettive, Veduta della Piazza di Monte Cavallo, The Piazza del Quirinale, Veduta dell insigne Basilica Vaticana coll’ ampio Portico, e Piazza adjacente, Veduta del Porto di Ripetta, Varie Vedute di Roma Antica e Moderna, Carceri : The Sawhorse, Prima Parte di Architetture, e Prospettive inventate, Catalogo Delle Opere date finora alla luce da Gio-Battista Piranesi, The Piazza Navona with S. Agnese on the Right
Quotations
Thomas De Quincey in
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1820) wrote the following:
"Many years ago, when
I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was
standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist ... which record
the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I
describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic
halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels,
cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power
put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you
perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi
himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a
sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards
to him."
An in-depth analysis of
Piranesi's Carceri was written by Marguerite Yourcenar in her Dark Brain of
Piranesi: and Other Essays (1984).
Further discussion of
Piranesi and the Carceri can be found in The Mind and Art of Giovanni
Battista Piranesi by John Wilton-Ely (1978).
The style of Piranesi was
imitated by 20th-century forger Eric Hebborn.
