The Smoking Fire
1761
Step into a dizzying nightmare of architecture where staircases lead nowhere and massive arches crush tiny, helpless figures below. This is one of Giovanni Battista Piranesi's famous 'Imaginary Prisons,' a series of etchings that look like a medieval dungeon crossed with a steampunk factory. The smoke billowing in the center suggests some mysterious, perhaps torturous, machinery at work, though the true purpose of this cavernous space remains a delicious mystery. Piranesi created these not as real places, but as fever dreams of infinite, oppressive space that would later inspire everyone from Edgar Allan Poe to the makers of the movie Inception.
- Technique
- Etching
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