Giovanni Battista Piranesi / The Round Tower, plate 3 of Carceri / ca. 1749-60

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
The Round Tower, plate 3 of Carceri
ca. 1749-60
View Larger Image

View Full Catalog Record Below

This image is one of over 108,000 from the AMICA Library (formerly The Art Museum Image Consortium Library- The AMICO Library™), a growing online collection of high-quality, digital art images from over 20 museums around the world. www.davidrumsey.com/amica offers subscriptions to this collection, the finest art image database available on the internet. EVERY image has full curatorial text and can be studied in depth by zooming into the smallest details from within the Image Workspace.

Preview the AMICA Library™ Public Collection in Luna Browser Now

Cultures and time periods represented range from contemporary art, to ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian works.
Types of works include paintings, drawings, watercolors, sculptures, costumes, jewelry, furniture, prints, photographs, textiles, decorative art, books and manuscripts.

Gain access to this incredible resource through either a monthly or a yearly subscription and search the entire collection from your desktop, compare multiple images side by side and zoom into the minute details of the images. Visit www.davidrumsey.com/amica for more information on the collection, click on the link below the revolving thumbnail to the right, or email us at amica@luna-img.com .

Creator Name: Piranesi, Giovanni Battista
Creator Nationality: European; Southern European; Italian
Creator Role: Artist
Creator Dates/Places: Italian, 1720-1778
Creator Name-CRT: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Title: The Round Tower, plate 3 of Carceri
View: Full View
Creation Start Date: 1749
Creation End Date: 1760
Creation Date: ca. 1749-60
Object Type: Prints
Materials and Techniques: Etching, engraving, sulphur tint or open bite, burnishing
Dimensions: 21 7/8 x 16 7/16 in. (55.6 x 41.8 cm)
AMICA Contributor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owner Location: New York, New York, USA
ID Number: 37.45.3(27)
Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1937
Rights: http://www.metmuseum.org/
Context:

A native of Venice, Piranesi went to Rome at age twenty and spent the rest of his life in the ancient city, which was the inspiration for and subject of most of his more than one thousand etchings. Piranesi studied architecture, engineering, and stage design, and his first plans for buildings reflect this background combined with the tremendous impact of classical Roman architecture. The fourteen plates depicting prisons, probably Piranesi's best-known series, were described on their title page as 'capricious inventions.' These structures, their immensity emphasized by the low viewpoint and the small size of the figures, derive from stage prisons rather than real ones-real prisons in the Italy of Piranesi's day were tiny dungeons. Spatial anomalies and ambiguities abound in all the images of the series; they were not meant to be logical but to express the vastness and strength that Piranesi experienced in contemplating Roman architecture, to which he remained in thrall throughout his life.

AMICA ID: MMA_.37.45.3-27
AMICA Library Year: 2000
Media Metadata Rights: Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art

AMICA PUBLIC RIGHTS: a) Access to the materials is granted for personal and non-commercial use. b) A full educational license for non-commercial use is available from Cartography Associates at www.davidrumsey.com/amica/institution_subscribe.html c) Licensed users may continue their examination of additional materials provided by Cartography Associates, and d) commercial rights are available from the rights holder.