More Piranesi prints

I am pleased, finally to present a Piranesi image in a large size. If you click on this you should get an idea of what they really look like. In the time before reproductions were common, things looked like, well, they looked like what they looked like. But now there is a phenomenon to be aware of, that things are often quite different in the flesh that you might think. I have been surprised to see a painting in a museum that I thought I knew and discovered it was very small. or large. There are painters whose work I like shrunk in reproduction and when I see them in real life I am disappointed by their looseness. Gruppe is an example of that
(for me, maybe not for you, its a matter of taste). Either way reproducing this etching large gives a better idea of what the thing really looks like. Please do click on that and see the thing in more like actual size. The others on this page will not be as large.

I want to make a few remarks on the etching above. Below you see a version on which I have drawn a few lines. As you can see Piranesi has "blocked" off his corners. Entrance to each corner is discouraged by a curving arc that redirects your gaze around and into the center part of the image. They are also each different enough from the other that they don't look really repetitive. They also bear a rhythmic relationship to each other. They impart a sort of spin or acceleration .
Within that outer group of enclosing arcs, I might call them curbs, is an inner decorative group of semicircular arcs that run across the picture plane rather than around its edges. Here they are.The whole assembly is very formal and very rhythmic, there is a love of geometry for its abstract appearance as much as for anything it describes. I can imagine a contemporary abstract painting built around those same arcing lines.Above is another that has a different pattern of arching lines. Notice how the line of the rope swagged to the left of the painting counters the ached doorway to the lower right of the image. I am reminded of the call and response motif that goes on in blues. One voice will sing something and another will echo it with a contrasting variant.There is a dialogue between those two shapes. The idea was common when I was in art school that design was solely the province of "modern" painting and the old ones were simply about what they represented. That is certainly not the case with Piranesi. Here is another with a nice big image when clicked upon;

There is a big arc placed asymmetrically across the top and the same swagged rope design going on here too. It is another variant on the same design game, opposing arcs that echo each other in opposite. There are a few unhappy wretches chained to the woodwork in this one. You can't hear it in the print but they are being subjected to a medley of Bobby Goldsboro hits including both "Honey" and "Wildfire" which while similar, are actually separate tunes.

Piranesi made thousands of etchings, he was a workaholic and died in his studio. When you look through the folios of his work they seem endless and most are very intricate. Many are pictures of ornamental vases and architectural embellishments And of course there are lots of Roman ruins.I will return tomorrow with more.