1720-1778

Italian draftsman, printmaker, architect, and art theorist also called Giambattista Piranesi, who was best known for his highly influential etchings of architectural views and his extraordinary imagination demonstrated in two series of engravings of imaginary prison scenes (the Carceri d'Invenzione, c. 1745). A prolific graphic artist, Piranesi produced more than 2,000 plates of intricate, textured, and highly contrasting imagery, which depicted a variety of subjects from ancient Roman monuments and ruins to imaginary reconstructions of ancient structures.