![]() ![]() Eco’s fabulous medieval library maze and Hogwarts’ stairwell are vintage Piranesi. It becomes even more explicit in the film adaptations. The influence is also discernible in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and the Harry Potter books. An etching from the Carceri series hung in his office and the scenes in heaven in The Discovery of Heaven (and in its film adaptation) are clearly inspired by it. Over 3,000 historic giclee prints, 16 artists and 40 complete sets Discover our exclusive collection Our artists: Audubon, Gould, Elliot, Thornton and many more Audubon’s Mocking Bird (DEF) 600.00 More prints by Audubon Gould’s Banded Kingfisher 149.00 More prints by Gould Elliot’s Rufous-tail Pheasant 189. Harry Mulisch (one of the great Dutch novelists) was also a fan. Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1948) are dystopian novels in which the menacing world of Piranesi is recognisable. A tyranny of order and efficiency that reduces humanity to a predictable cog in a process. He compares Piranesi’s prisons to the panopticism that was so popular in architecture at the time. ![]() Aldous Huxley wrote an essay accompanying an edition of Piranesi’s prints in 1949. double-page engraved title, and 15 double-page plates (numbered II-XVI). That started early on with writers and poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey, Lord Byron, John Keats, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Edgar Allan Poe. Like Escher, Piranesi was an artist who infuses his prints with both order and chaos, thus garnering mass appeal. For many artists it is an abiding source of inspiration, particularly in terms of its utopian and dystopian character. Piranesi’s oeuvre not only influenced M.C. Conversely, Escher’s prints lack the dark, menacing element that characterises Piranesi’s series. From his detailed etchings of Rome to the dark imaginings of his fictitious prisons. But in terms of abandoning gravity and creating truly impossible buildings and spaces, he never goes to the extreme to which Escher would eventually go. Piranesi is one of Italy’s most extraordinary artists. Piranesi exaggerates the perspective and renders his spaces hugely impressive with dramatic lighting and a beautiful light/dark contrast. Here he creates a threatening, hidden world full of ominous caverns and hanging pulleys and cables, in which man is occasionally present yet markedly insignificant and vulnerable. Labyrinths filled with an infinite number of stairs, ladders, bridges, gates and galleries, none of which seem to lead anywhere. The Carceri is a series of etchings with colossal, vertiginous spaces that seem to never end. Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione (plate 7, The Drawbridge), second version, etching, 1761 Reference: Andrew Robison: Piranesi - Early architectural Fantasies - a Catalogue Raisonné of the Etchings, 1986.Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d'invenzione (title plate), second version, etching, 1761 Piranesi didn't make any extensive changes to The Sawhorse, but he added an important number of small details which increase the sense of foreboding emanating from the place: he added threatening spikes to the sawhorse and to the bollard (bottom right), and he added or redrew several architectural details – a window, a wooden beam, some cantilevers and iron bars. In this second edition, Piranesi extensively reworked the fourteen plates from 1749, sometimes completely transforming the appearance of the places with the addition of numerous elements. The second edition, published by Piranesi himself from 1761, has two additional plates. TRAJAN’S COLUMN 1886 Giovanni Battista Piranesi VICTORIAN PRINT £25.00 Free postage PIRANESI mounted ltd ed vintage print 16 x 12 1965 Carceri d’Invenzione CI13 £39. The first edition of the Imaginary Prisons, published in 1749-1750 by Giovanni Bouchard, was comprised of fourteen plates. Impressions of the 4th state bearing the watermark Robison 36 are from the 3rd issue of the 2nd edition and date from mid 1760’s – early 1770’s. Very fine impression printed on laid paper with watermark (Fleur de Lys in a double circle, with initials CB, Robison 36). Impression of the 4th state (of 6), with the roman numeral XII, top right corner, but without the C added in the 5th state before Piranesi f in bottom left margin. ![]()
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