etching technique

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, born in 1720, was truly inspired by Ancient Roman architecture. Giovanni moved from Venice to Rome to continue his work in etchings, at the age of 20. Piranesi studied architecture, engineering and stage design. He was the son of a stonemason and builder, and first studied drawing with his uncle who was an engineer. Piranesi found in it an outlet for all his interests, from designing fantastic complexes of buildings that could exist only in dreams. Giovanni was considered one of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century. Piranesi also received a thorough background in perspective construction and stage design, he considered himself as an architect.The Round Tower from 'Carceri D'invenzione' (Imaginary Prisons), 1749–1750 captured Giovanni’s eye. These etchings were issued as a collection of fourteen, but he reworked the series significantly as a set of sixteen in 1761. The fourteen plates depicting prisons, is Piranesi’s best known work, populated with indistinguishable figures that emphasize the scale and complexity of the scenes. The final series features greater detail and stronger tonal contrasts, enhancing the works’ sinister character. The figures are dark, and portray staged prison’s other than real ones. Giovanni implies spatial structures of famous buildings, and ambiguities in all of his drawings, manipulating perspective through the use of multiple vanishing points. They were not meant to be logical but to express the vastness and  a deep understanding of construction, which helped to cultivate an unprecedented appreciation of Roman architecture. Some areas fall into deep black shadow, while others gleam with a strange light from no particular source. There are windows which seem not to look out on anything, and we can also see some pulleys and ropes. Line is a very insistent element in this work: it makes itself felt. When we look close we see that it is mostly hatching and crosshatching, though there are some exceptions – the long strings of lines that make up the pulleys, for example. Of course, etching normally involves hatching and crosshatching as the most convenient way to build up tone. In every one of these etchings, Piranesi’s line and vision work together to create a concept that remains as disturbing as it ever was: the world is the prison, and the prison is the world.

Citations:

https://www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/antique/giovanni-battista-piranesi/

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pira/hd_pira.htm