Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:00:21 JST

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian etcher who paid the bills with prints and architectural ventures, including on one occasion a papal commission (never carried out). What he's best remembered for, though, is a series of engravings that will look very familiar to anyone familiar with the works of M. C. Escher. Carcieri d'invenzione, Imaginary Prisons, published in 1750 and significantly improved in 1761, consists of sixteen places that while not geometrically impossible are certainly odd:

Compare Escher's famous Relativity:

Prisons and other works are hosted in many places online, but unfortunately a commonly-linked resource at Tokyo University appears to be gone. This site seems to have most of Piranesi's work, as well as work by Dore and Durer, though all the text is in Japanese.

Do enjoy. Ψ