The Round Tower, plate 3 from the second edition of Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons)
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720-1778)
1750, reworked 1761
- Medium
- Etching, engraving, sulphur tint, and burnishing in black on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- 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.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Joseph Brooks Fair Memorial Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
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
