STUDIO

Piranesi: An exhibition at the Fondazione Marco Besso, Rome

Alasdair Palmer

THE ITALIAN ENGRAVER GIAMBATTISTA PIRANESI (1720 — 1778) is most famous for Imaginary Prisons, a series of dark, nightmarish images of the insides of colossal buildings [1] [2]. They contain stairways that lead nowhere, perspectives that contradict each other, vast pulleys and other machines that appear to have no function, as well as instruments of torture. The human figures are spindly and insignificant. Some of them are being pulled apart on the rack. Others appear to be about to fall off the edges of impossibly high walls. There is a great deal that is strange about these Imaginary Prisons, not least the title — for they do not depict prisons in the usual sense of that word: a place for keeping criminals under lock and key so that they cannot…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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