c. 1749

The Round Tower

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Italian, 1720 - 1778

Piranesi combined several etching methods to create a series of sixteen prints of imaginary prisons. Poets and authors have described the artist’s provocative dungeons not as physical structures but nightmarish prisons of the mind where endless staircases, unending cloisters, pits, platforms, racks, and chains represent incomprehensible states of guilt and anxiety.

Seemingly conjuring the mysterious architecture like an alchemist, Piranesi applied corrosive chemicals directly on the copper plates and in some cases rubbed their surfaces with a very fine abrasive to generate variant areas of smoky gray tone. First-state impressions (printed from the initial versions of the plates) such as the one shown here is filled with pentimenti (repentances). These “painter’s mistakes,” where initial ideas remain visible adjacent to the artist’s alterations, underscore the synergy of Piranesi’s powerful imagination and creative process.