Having been to many different prisons in the U.S., I can’t even imagine this as the same tool for caging people that we do. This is completely antithetical to anything that we consider in building today’s prisons, which is profound to me. You see these staircases that bring people in.There are folks who are going to come and visit these prisoners. The other thing that is interesting about these spaces is their almost grand exterior foyers. There’s an expression of value in the aesthetics of the prison itself. The other thing is they are architectural. For the number of individuals that we have in prison today, this would be insufficient. thinking about our own prison industrial complex, is these spaces are way too small. thing that’s interesting to me about these. The plates for the rarer first edition-seen here-were only lightly etched by Piranesi, allowing the freedom and spontaneity of his drawing to emerge. In turn, echoes of his prisons’ limitless, confusing spaces can be found in productions up to the present day, including the movies Metropolis, Blade Runner, and Inception, as well as the moving staircase of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. Piranesi’s experience with theatrical set design was likely another source of inspiration for him. The human agency so valued by Enlightenment principles appears crushed within an impersonal and ominous universe. Classical architecture was a symbol of Western civilization and its achievements, but here, it represents something dark and irrational. Piranesi was trained as an architect, and the design of his fantastical dungeons was informed by his knowledge of ancient Roman ruins. The enormous chambers dwarf the mysterious figures that populate them, evoking an oppressive and unrelenting atmosphere of privation and despair. These plates depict vast, labyrinthine spaces spanned by vaults and arches, crossed by seemingly endless staircases, and filled with hooks, chains, and ropes that suggest machines of torture.

Around 1749–50 Giovanni Battista Piranesi published an ambitious series of fourteen large etchings known as The Imaginary Prisons.

Piranesi carceri etching for sale