The Well
A deep shaft under a crane and rigging, one of the darkest plates in Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons.
- Work
- The Well, Plate XIII, from Le Carceri d’Invenzione (second edition)
- Artist / naturalist
- Giovanni Battista Piranesi
- Origin & date
- Rome, 1761
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$19.00
The story
A deep circular well or shaft anchors the left side of this plate, a wooden crane and hanging bucket rigged above it, while a crowded stairway climbs away to the right past figures who read, at this scale, as prisoners or laborers rather than free visitors. This is among the busiest compositions in Le Carceri d'Invenzione, layering catwalks, a barred grate, hanging chains, and a distant lit archway into a single frame with almost no resolved negative space — the viewer's eye finds no single clear path through the architecture, which is very much the intended effect. What to notice: Piranesi labeled this plate 'XIII' in the upper corner, a small numeral that is nearly the only legible, stable mark in an otherwise deliberately disorienting composition — a hand-drafted anchor point in a space built to have none.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper: smooth, no glare.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guarantee.
