Prisons, plate VII (The Drawbridge)

An unsuccessful architect best known for his scenic engravings of Rome, Piranesi unleashed his frustrations and imagination in the series Carceri (Prisons). These etchings depict contradictory and fantastic spaces, such as interiors with no walls, spanned by truncated bridges and pointless staircases. In a thicket of loose, obscuring marks, Piranesi shows the monumental architecture of previous centuries grown over with mechanical detritus. Thwarting architectural drawing conventions, he warps perspective and narrative to create an impossible space, habitable only by the dreaming mind. Faint figures wander amongst the mash-up of history and the shadowy spiked instruments, huddled in fear of some ambiguous menace. Their paths trace the orbits of the viewer’s thoughts, as they search for footholds in the chaos of Piranesi’s pure invention.

Piranesi completed two editions of the series; he began the first portfolio of thirteen works around 1749 and issued a second edition in 1761. This image comes from the second edition, for which Piranesi completely reworked the plates and added two new prints. He increased the contrasts between the lit spaces and the deep shadows, elaborated the structure and details of the prison, and emphasized the visual ensnarement of the viewer in the inescapable, infernal space.