The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 15, 2025
Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10
1749–50
(Italian, 1720–1778)
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.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund 1941.26.8
Catalogue raisonné: Focillon 33 ; Hind 10 I/III ; Robison 36 I/IV ; Wilton-Ely 35 Early State
Location: Not on view
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.- Imagination in the Age of Reason. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 28, 2024-March 2, 2025).Old Master Prints and Drawings. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 29, 1966-February 28, 1967).Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 3, 1958-October 11, 1959).
- {{cite web|title=Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, Plate 10|url=false|author=Giovanni Battista Piranesi|year=1749–50|access-date=15 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1941.26.8