Inside the same temple 

Giovanni Battista Piranesi created this print, Inside the same temple, using etching—a printmaking process that relies on acid to eat away at the surface of a metal plate. Look closely, and you'll see a tension between the precision of the architectural details and the overall sense of romantic decay. Piranesi’s print captures the texture and weight of the massive stone columns, emphasizing their age and the effects of time. Etching is a meticulous process, demanding careful planning and skilled execution. The artist would have painstakingly drawn the design onto a prepared metal plate, and then immersed in acid. The longer the plate remains in the acid bath, the deeper the lines become, allowing for a range of tonal effects in the final print. Piranesi was deeply interested in the grandeur of ancient Rome, but also in its decline. His prints offer a meditation on the passage of time, and the relationship between human ambition and the forces of nature. By focusing on the materiality of these ancient structures, we are invited to consider the labor and resources that went into their creation, as well as the social and political contexts that shaped their rise and fall.