Click here to listen to short extracts from Susanna Clarke’s novel 'Piranesi' (2020) read by co-curator Margherita Dosi Delfini, and a commentary on how the novel informed the curators’ understanding of Piranesi’s 'Smoking Fire'.

This etching visualises a dizzying and monumental prison made up of arches, platforms and bridges. While the depth and precision of the tonal details trick the eye into perceiving a convincingly real space, the building is a fictitious structure, a product of the artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s imagination. Piranesi was an architectural draughtsman, renowned for his series of architectural fantasies, Invenzioni Capricci di Carceri (Imaginary Prisons). In this drawing from this series, Piranesi plays with the possibilities and limits of architecture, and pushes our understanding of construction and perspective in this transformative, labyrinthine structure.

[Reading of ‘Piranesi’ and commentary on ‘Smoking Fire’ by Margherita Dosi Delfini by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

“I am determined to explore as much of the World as I can in my lifetime. To this end, I have travelled as far as the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North and the Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South….In all these places, I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead. I have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End, but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the Far Distance. [...] Outside the House there are only the Celestial Objects: Sun, Moon and Stars.” 

Taken from Susanna Clark’s book Piranesi, these are the words of a character called Piranesi, speaking about his solitary existence in an abandoned and labyrinthine house. This house is, in fact, an impossible space, and it is informed by the 18teenth Century Italian draughtsman, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the artist of the etching Smoking Fire. The author has said that the artist’s series ‘Imaginary Prisons’, of which Smoking Fire is part of, have haunted her since she was a young woman. Clarke’s words in the book Piranesi therefore breathe new life into the artist’s etchings, revealing their rich atmospheric quality. The etching can be understood as a testament to the boundless nature of human imagination and is an image that traverses time. It shows how we can travel through the thresholds of our mind, moving from our reality into deeper realms of our imagination into otherworldly dimensions.

Smoking fire, 1749-60

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778)

Click here to listen to short extracts from Susanna Clarke’s novel 'Piranesi' (2020) read by co-curator Margherita Dosi Delfini, and a commentary on how the novel informed the curators’ understanding of Piranesi’s 'Smoking Fire'.

'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke, copyright © 2020. Published by Bloomsbury USA