“Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi,” mused Thomas De Quincey in his 1821 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He wasn’t worried about the real Piranesi, long dead by then; he was considering the plight of an etched figure he understood to be Piranesi in one of the artist’s Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). “Creeping along […]

Original source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/05/11/the-perpetual-provocateur-giovanni-battista-piranesi/