Artwork Page for Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10

Details / Information for Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10

Series Title: Imaginary Prisons

Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10

1749–50

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

(Italian, 1720–1778)
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Culture
Italy, 18th century
Medium
etching, engraving, sulphur tint or open bite, burnishing
Measurements
Plate: 41.2 x 54.2 cm (16 1/4 x 21 5/16 in.); Sheet: 49.5 x 63.4 cm (19 1/2 x 24 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Dudley P. Allen Fund 1941.26.8
Catalogue raisonné
Focillon 33 ; Hind 10 I/III ; Robison 36 I/IV ; Wilton-Ely 35 Early State
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Author Thomas De Quincy compared the disorienting and disturbing imagery of this series to his experience with opium addiction in his 1821 book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

Description

In his series of imaginary prisons, Giovanni Battista Piranesi experimented with scale, perspective, and etching to create disorienting and disturbing images of incarceration. Based on his training as a stage designer rather than on observations of real prisons, Piranesi used a low vantage point and distant staircases to disrupt traditional perspective and to emphasize both the monumentality of the space and the futility of trying to escape. Set against a strange cloud of white smoke, the densely drawn and deeply etched lines of the prisoners at left produce a confusing jumble of bodies that, while imprecise, evoke their pain and punishment.
A horizontally oriented black-and-white etching depicts a vast, cavernous interior with towering stone arches and intersecting wooden walkways. Figures with light skin tones congregate on a jagged stone platform on the left. Heavy ropes and a hanging weight descend from the ceiling. Throughout the architecture, tiny figures populate multiple levels of elevated bridges and balconies. Dense, overlapping lines create dramatic contrast between deep shadows and bright highlights in this labyrinthine space.

Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10

1749–50

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

(Italian, 1720–1778)
Italy, 18th century

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