Piranesi taschen12/3/2023 ![]() With a low viewpoint and small, fragile figures, the prison scenes become monstrous megacities of incarceration, celebrated to this day as masterworks of existentialist drama. Staircases exist on two planes simultaneously vast, vaulted ceilings seem to soar up to the heavens interior and exterior distinctions collapse. Loosely based on contemporary stage sets rather than the actual dingy dungeons of Piranesi’s day, these intricate images defy architectural reality to play instead with perspective, lighting, and scale. Today, Piranesi is renowned not just for shaping the European imagination of Rome, but also for his elaborate series of fanciful prisons, Carceri, which have influenced generations of creatives since, from the Surrealists to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. The Complete Etchings published by Taschen showcases the entire collection of etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. His startling, chiaroscuro images imbued the city’s archaeological ruins with drama and romance and became favorite souvenirs for the Grand Tourists who traveled Italy in pursuit of classical culture and education. Yet Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor argue that his single greatest art formone that combined his obsessions. ![]() May contain limited notes, underlining or highlighting that does affect the text. A draftsman, printmaker, architect, and archaeologist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (172078) is best known today as the virtuoso etcher of the immersive and captivating Views of Rome and the darkly inventive Imaginary Prisons. As an artist, I found it unsatisfactory and, ultimately, too frustrating.The most famous 18th-century copper engraver, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) made his name with etchings of ancient Rome. Spine creases, wear to binding and pages from reading. If you are a student or scholar, looking for a reference collection of the etchings at a modest price, then this is the book for you. In all honesty it never claims to be more than an introduction. There is nothing wrong with the scholarly text, but the fact that each page is printed in three languages (as is each caption) means there is not as much of it as there first seems, and again the print is small and rather faint. I am short-sighted and don't have any difficulties with fine print anyone with the long sight of age would probably want a magnifying glass. ![]() The result is that the prints are crammed in, too small, and one can neither see the detail nor appreciate the impact of the whole. Here, Taschen have printed as many of the etchings as humanly possible in a book which is, though thick, not very large. ![]() I was hoping for a book which captured the force of the originals. Piranesi's etchings (which I love) are moody and atmospheric. It's important to review one's failures, as well as the books one likes I bought this in hope and confident of the Taschen brand, and sadly it is now on the way to the charity shop. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Continue without accepting’ or ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices or learn more. Third parties use cookies for the purposes of displaying and measuring personalised advertisements, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. This includes using first- and third-party cookies which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we will also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences, and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice.
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