The Digital PiranesiMain MenuAboutThe Digital Piranesi is a developing digital humanities project that aims to provide an enhanced digital edition of the works of Italian illustrator Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778).Works and VolumesGenres, Subjects, and ThemesBibliographyGlossary
Plate III
1media/piranesi-2M-vol08-003_thumb.jpg2021-07-18T13:39:25-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f228492plain2021-07-18T14:02:02-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f
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12021-07-20T14:08:50-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68fRound towerHelen B. Kampmann Marodin4plain2021-09-07T08:50:07-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f
12021-07-20T14:18:09-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68fSentry boxesHelen B. Kampmann Marodin3plain2021-07-26T13:53:58-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f
12021-07-20T14:03:57-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68fGroin vaulted ceilingsHelen B. Kampmann Marodin3plain2021-09-07T08:50:08-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f
12021-07-20T14:12:39-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68fHanging clothHelen B. Kampmann Marodin2plain2021-07-20T14:17:52-07:00Helen B. Kampmann Marodin057612e7fc4f8728b1dcdf23e7ab160b2ebfb68f
In Plate III, for the first time, we find ourselves in a completely interior space with no visible exit. Nonetheless, the architecture gives us hints that we are still at the top of what will be a long voyage into the entrails of Piranesi's underground. At the top of the illustration, the groin vaulted ceilings indicate there are no upper spaces to go, but only an indeterminable descent. Also in this plate, we can see the debut of Piranesi's port-like structures including, in this etching, the round tower and the sentry boxes. It's also in this plate that a recurrent image in the series appears for the first time: the people hanging cloths on the parapet of catwalks.
Most of the illustrations of the Carceri resemble colossal port complexes, a familiar environment that connected Piranesi to his hometown Venice. In these spaces, Piranesi combined different platforms, sentry boxes, lanterns, bollards and mooring rings with vestiges of ships, contributing to the perception of the spaces as abandoned, decommissioned ports where, nevertheless, water is absent. In the matter of fact, the environment is not only dry but completely barren. There is not even the most remote sign of life besides the tiny phantasmagoric human figures. No hint of any kind of vegetation, nor fungi, nor even lichen: nothing flourishes in the hostile atmosphere that Piranesi created. The dryness of the spaces reflected, in a provocative way, Piranesi’s apprehension about the lack of imagination of the cultural rulers in promoting the arts, the architecture, and the ethics. For Piranesi, the well of the imagination of some of his contemporaries was dry.
