At the age of 7-8, his favourite pastime was measuring the width of the walls, the height of the cornices, the distance between the window and door openings. Impossible Architecture by Maurits Cornelis Escher completes the line started in the Prisons by Piranesi.įrom the very childhood of Giovanni Battista, everything went to the fact that he would become an architect and nothing else. This opens the way for future surrealists - they will interpret Piranesi as a subject of an eternal "trip", a journey into the dark and unknown depths of their own selves. De Quincey hints: the "paper architect" could have come up with the Prisons in an altered state of consciousness. In the 1840s, the romantic writer and amateur occultist Vladimir Odoevsky composed Opere del Cavaliere Giambattista Piranesi, a work in which the fiction architect Piranesi dreamt of connecting the volcanoes Etna and Vesuvius with a vault, and place a park of his designed castle behind these triumphal gates.Ī little earlier, the British romantic Thomas de Quincey, in his sensational Confessions of an Englishman, an Opium Lover, the hero follows Piranesi in his opium vision, who was balancing over the abyss and climbing the endless stairs and sheer walls of grandiose imaginary prisons (this is the name the mysterious cycle of Piranesian engravings). Piranesi became the hero of literary opuses long before Clarke’s novel. Yes, almost everything specifically imperial in Russian architecture grew out of the spiritualized and grandiose Rome, recreated in Piranesi’s engravings! Isaac’s Cathedral and Stalinist buildings. Architects who worked in Russia later, from Auguste Montferrand in the 19th century to Boris Iofan in the 20th century, also could not escape the influence of Piranesi’s Views of Rome when they designed iconic buildings in Russian capitals, both St. The architects who worked at her court - Giacomo Quarenghi, Charles Cameron, Vasily Bazhenov - were either friends with Piranesi, or under his strong influence, and this affected the appearance of many buildings in St. Russian tsarina Catherine II admitted that she was crazy about Piranesi’s "architectural treatises". Those who did not see Rome live successfully imagined it after Piranesi. Whole generations of architects grew up on Piranesi’s etchings albums, his works were enthusiastically collected and passed on by inheritance. They created engravings and theatrical scenery à la Piranesi, built palaces and bridges, wrote essays and novels. In general, the "paper architect" managed to catch the beginning of piranesimania during his lifetime - not so much imitation as passionate and delighted succession. Goethe was rather sceptical about Piranesi’s activity (we'll tell you why later). Both his work and his very personality have a powerful charisma that few can resist. Surely, Clarke is not the first to fall under the spell of the greatest "architectural science fiction writer" Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720−1778). The novel is full of implicit, but clearly distinguishable references to his work. The protagonist who explored the endless Halls decorated with Statues in anticipation of the Tides is named Piranesi, just like the Italian engraver of the 18th century. In 2020, almost the main literary sensation was the parable novel by the English writer Suzanne Clarke, Piranesi.
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