Hoge ruimte met rondbogen 1771 - 1781

Curator: This engraving, "Hoge ruimte met rondbogen", meaning High Space with Round Arches, crafted between 1771 and 1781 by Vincenzo Mazzi, invites us into a cavernous, imagined interior. What's your initial reaction? Editor: Claustrophobia, but with a chaser of awe. The perspective amplifies the scale, making it both monumental and slightly oppressive. It feels less like architecture and more like a Piranesi dreamscape etched in infinite lines. Curator: Mazzi uses those very lines to masterful effect. The architecture is the subject, of course, but the obsessive detail transforms it into a portrait of volume and depth. What could these arches symbolize for you? Editor: Arches are interesting! They're weight-bearing, they support a huge amount of architecture but for me, these particular ones feel less structural and more psychological. Think of memory palaces, how we construct images in our minds to hold onto knowledge. These repetitive forms almost suggest that... or, a cathedral of the subconscious. Curator: Intriguing! You read more into these stone corridors than simply baroque sensibilities? Editor: Oh, the Baroque's there, definitely, but filtered through something else. I see echoes of ancient Roman vaults but with an almost hallucinatory precision. Curator: Hallucinatory, yes, because these interiors likely never existed as presented here, but the symbolic language feels familiar. I'm struck by how modern it appears, considering its age. It foreshadows architectural fantasies later realized on screen, perhaps. Editor: Precisely! I think Mazzi hit something essential here about how humans imagine space. The power in ruins and also in monumentalism and line work. Even within limitations, it has a strangely limitless quality. The engraving asks us: "What if we could walk through our thoughts?".