Prints and their makers: essays on engravers and etchers old and modern

by Unknown

The “English Opium-Eater” in likening his visions to these pictures,—and what higher praise of their imaginative force could there be?—speaks of their “power of endless growth and self-reproduction.” One of their distinguishing peculiarities is this repetition of parts, as of things which grow out of themselves unceasingly, reproducing their parts until the brain reels at the idea of their endlessness. This characteristic, together with that curious opposition between their air of open immensity and their suggestion of prison-horror, gives them that particular appearance of absolute reality in the midst of impossibility, which is a distinctive feature of dreams. In this way they arouse a sense of infinitude in the mind of the beholder; now, although size is in itself of no importance, it is nevertheless true that, when combined with other qualities of value, “greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime.” This greatness, both in conception and in material execution, they possess, together with that opposition of light to obscurity which “seems in general to be necessary to make anything very terrible.” Indeed, that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor arouse a kind of awe in any one who gives them more than a passing glance, while the horror which they suggest is never physical so as to nauseate or “press too nearly” and cause pain, but imparts, on the contrary, a sense of danger and of terror that causes a delightful excitement, certainly fulfilling the definition of the sublime as given by Burke.

Although it does not follow that Piranesi is a greater etcher than Rembrandt, it may still be true that these etchings reveal a more imaginative vigor than is shown in those of the great Dutchman. They do not possess that subtle imagination which envelops everything that Rembrandt ever touched in an air of exquisite mystery, and gives to his least sketch an inexhaustible fund of suggestion, nor can they be compared to his etchings as consummate works of art; yet they do have a titanic, irresistible force of sheer imagination, which neither Rembrandt nor any other etcher, however superior in other ways, possessed to the same extent. Their preëminence in this one point is certainly admissible, and as it has been shown, presumably, that they are imaginative, original, and sublime, is it too much to say that, at least in the expression of certain intellectual qualities, Piranesi in these plates carried the art of etching to the highest point yet attained, so that no one who does not know these plates can know quite all that etching is capable of expressing?

“The Prisons” are also the most notable example of that principle of opposition, or contrast, of which Piranesi made so masterful a use in whatever he did. The application of this law in the handling, and at times in the abuse, of blacks and whites, is, of course, apparent to even the most casual observer in all that came from his hand. In the present series, however, this law may be seen carried to its utmost limit. From every stupendous vault there hangs a long, thin rope, while up gigantic pillars of rough masonry climb frail ladders of wood, and great voids between immense piers are spanned by light bridges, also of wood, bearing the slightest and most open of iron railings. In his plates of Roman ruins, Piranesi introduces the human figure dressed in the lovely costume of the eighteenth century, in order to contrast grace with force, and to oppose the living and the fugitive to the inanimate and the enduring; but here his use of the human figure rises to the truly dramatic. In the midst of these vast and awful halls with their air of stillness and of power, of “resistance overcome,” he places men who seem the smallest and the frailest among creatures. Grouped by twos or threes, whether depicted in violent motion or standing with significant gesture, they are always enigmatic in their attitudes, so that their presence and obvious emotion amid this immense and silent grandeur arouse a sense of tragic action, a feeling of mysterious wonder and curiosity that gives to all lovers of intellectual excitement a pleasure as keen as unusual. Particularly in one vision of a monstrous wheel of wood revolving in space, no one knows how, above a fragment of rocky architecture, while three human beings engaged in animated converse are obviously unconscious of the gigantic revolutions, the limits of fantasy are reached, and the mind turns instinctively to those images of the spheres rolling eternally in infinite space which are found in Milton and all mystic poets.

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate IX

Size of the original etching, 21½ × 16 inches

Piranesi. The Prisons. Plate VII

Size of the original etching, 21⅝ × 16⅛ inches

These plates are also interesting as a striking and curious proof of Piranesi’s conscious mastery of his art. They are filled with such a fury of imagination, and are etched with such dash and boldness of execution that it seems as though they must be, if not, as was once said, the sane work of a madman, at least burned directly on the plate by the force of a fever-stricken mind. But not so; they are, however fevered their original inspiration may have been, the result of careful elaboration, and are but one more proof of the saying of that other and still greater etcher, Whistler, that a work of art is complete, and only complete, when all traces have disappeared of the means by which it was created. There exists in the British Museum a unique, and until recently unknown, series of first states of “The Prisons.” Now, although these first states have the main outline and, as it were, the germ of the published states, these latter are so elaborated and, on the whole, improved, as to make it at first incredible that they could ever have grown out of, or had any relation to, the earlier states. The idea of vast masses of masonry is there, thrown on the paper with a simplicity of decorative effect and a directness of touch which have been lessened in the later work; but, on the other hand, all those scaffolds, engines of torment, and groups of men above described, are lacking, so that the power of contrast and the sense of terror, productive of the sublime, are entirely wanting, and are, therefore, shown to be the result of conscious art used by Piranesi in elaboration of an original inspiration.