More inspiration: ye olde underhive. Or perhaps Thee Undderhyvve (am I doing that right?). Giovanni Piranesi was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric prisons. These prison etchings were called ‘capricci’ – an artistic term meaning fantastical aggregations of archeological elements, architecture and ruin. It occurs to me that capricci are one of my favourite things (and it’s a pretty good term to describe Necromunda photography) but a google image search just brings up lots of images of screaming children (one of my least favourite things).

The video above is a walkthrough of Piranesi’s etchings created for an exhibition, it wasn’t actually created by the man himself as he died in 1778 and so didn’t have access to broadband.

Some images here on pinterest:

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4 Comments on “Piranesi’s Prisons

  1. Cool article – I’m a big fan of Piranesi myself. His artwork was a major inspiration to the art direction of Mordheim, my all time favourite GW game. It really cemented the grimdark and vanitas elements that are so prevalent in both the old Warhammer and the Imperium of 40k.
    That video was a great discovery – to be honest it really reminded me of the Dark Souls games!

    • This is an old post I published again by mistake, but I do love this video, impressively constructed I think. Dark Souls again! If I wasn’t such a wimp with games I’d give it a go

      • They are great games but soooo hard and soul destroying – you’re probably better off never playing them. To be honest, after I finally completed DS 1 I felt very little satisfaction, more a sense of relief, like I’d survived a long and arduous battle with a terminal illness! Man it was a tough game!

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