This page was created by Michael Andrew Gavin. The last update was by Helen B. Kampmann Marodin.
Plate II
After Piranesi’s welcome in the title page, we find ourselves in the densely packed illustration of Plate II, a completely new addition to the Carceri d’Invenzione as the series was published in 1761. Together with plates IV and IX, it is among the few illustrations in which open skies are clearly visible, providing us a chance to decline the descent to Piranesi’s dreary underground. In contrast to the other plates, Piranesi offers here and in plate XVI written hints to specific events in ancient Roman history introducing the narrative that runs throughout the series. Piranesi alludes both to the Republican period (510 – c. 31 BCE) and the beginning of ancient Rome’s empire through the busts and incised names into stone plaques at the top and center of the image. With the outstanding multiplicity of architectural fragments and elements, reliefs, and oddly scaled human figures, Piranesi overwhelms our sight and recreates his own anguish, which is ultimately rooted in the lack of direction that he identified in the patronage system of his own time. In Piranesi’s time - between the decline of the Baroque and the emergence of Neoclassicism, both Roman and Greek legacies disputed the preference of scholars, artists, architects, poets, and the public. The illustration is a critique of the loss of consistency and lucidity in the arts: people, big and small, turn in various directions, appreciate disparate elements, and show all sorts of dissimilar reactions. Piranesi considered the cultural scene of contemporary Rome to be similarly capriciously disoriented. Additionally, he makes an argument about the moral decadence of Rome after the influence of Greek culture. The lack of moral principles, excesses of luxury, and vulgar ostentation marked the highly philhellene aristocracy in the end of the ancient Republic in Rome, according to classical sources. Similarly, these are characteristics that were strongly associated with the Baroque in the eighteenth century.