A huge wooden wheel and pulley assembly, scaled for hauling loads far beyond any plausible human use, dominates the upper half of this plate, suspended above a fortified gate structure at lower center. Piranesi's Carceri plates consistently pair recognizable Roman architectural vocabulary — rusticated stonework, round arches, coffered vaulting — with mechanical apparatus that belongs to no real building tradition, a deliberate collision between the classical past he etched everywhere else in his career and an invented, almost industrial machinery of confinement. What to notice: the wheel's function is genuinely ambiguous — is it raising a portcullis, a prisoner, a load of stone? — and that ambiguity is the point; the Carceri series never explains its own architecture, leaving every mechanism to work on pure visual menace rather than legible function.

Maker: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Date: 1761
Medium of the original: Plate
Original held by: Wikimedia Commons
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Rights: Public domain, verified
Catalogue number: PA-00309

As chosen: 8 x 10 in, art print, classic frame
Picture	8 x 10 in
Outside size	9.6 x 11.6 in
Depth	0.9 in (22 mm)
Weight	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: shipped weight per size and frame]]
Hanging	[[REAL PROOF NEEDED: hanging hardware Prodigi fits to this frame]]
Material	Enhanced matte art paper, 200 gsm; acrylic glazing
Made in	Charlotte, North Carolina, by Prodigi

Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.

How the print check works

Sizes offered
Size	dpi	Grade	How it fits
8 x 10 in	190	Good	Trimmed 4.6%

Sizes withheld
Size	Why
8 x 12 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
11 x 14 in	138 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 16 in	125 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
12 x 18 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
16 x 20 in	95 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
16 x 24 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
18 x 24 in	83 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
20 x 30 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
24 x 30 in	63 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
24 x 36 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop
30 x 40 in	50 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
36 x 48 in	41 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged
40 x 60 in	Wrong shape: a 13% crop

Scanned

2026-10-07

Master file

1,526 x 2,000 px, srgb, Adobe RGB (1998)

Tone

Darks 35, lights 239 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark

Colour

0% vivid

Sharpness

140.04

Notes

Colour profile Adobe RGB (1998), converted to sRGB for the screen and the print
Neutrals lean warm (yellow): the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned

Shipping for this piece to a US address is $24.80, the print room’s own rate, charged per piece. Checkout shows the total before you pay.

Every piece is printed after you order it, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and ships from there. For now we ship to US addresses only.

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