Carcieri

Piranesi’s massive dungeon landscapes brought to life with CINEMA 4D

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Colossal vaulted rooms in the twilight, huge columns, stairs and bridges, archaic-looking machines without any obvious function whose sheer size make a foreboding impression. Amid all of this masked figures crouched in dark corners and nudes in poses of suffering. Ropes dangling from the ceilings and overhangs above, spanning through the immense void between the massive walls. Steel bars block gate-like portals, retaining rings are embedded in the stone walls and the floor has gaping holes that obviously lead to even deeper chasims. 

Just what are these Carcieri? This is a series of 16 copper etchings created between 1745 and 1761 by the Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. It is still being speculated why Piranesi, who earned his living from the sale of his etchings, created these motifs. His topics were otherwise primarily landscapes and depictions of Roman ruins, which can be found everywhere in Italy and were much more popular in Piranesi’s time.

Piranesi’s Carcieri images, however, stand in such contrast to the rest of his work that they have overshadowed his work over the years. The visions depicted in the Carcieri etchings are archaic, foreboding and at the same time so fascinating that they have inspired numerous artists. It is probably this inspirational power that has kept this 250-year-old collection of copper etchings alive.

Piranesi’s etchings still inspire designers, film makers, authors and artists in whose work we can see the inspirational elements of one of the most important artists of the Baroque. Gregóir Dupond used a completely different approach and used the etchings themselves as the topic of his film.

Using CINEMA 4D, he created a short film in which Piranesi's gigantic vaulted rooms are explored – with a surprisingly simple method. The camera makes its way through various dungeons and by directing the camera through doors, windows, ventilation ducts and numerous other openings, Dupond creates a seamless transition between various settings and is able to create a link between the various etchings.

The technical realization of this challenging project was amazingly simple: The etchings show the rooms from only one point of view. Using these as a basis, Dupont modeled a simplified version of the geometry and projected a high-res version of each etching onto it from the proper angle. This preserved the etching's character and appears in 3D as what it is – a copper etching and as such an artificial piece of human creativity. Texture distortions were expected and became part of the film's style that additionally emphasizes the newly created depth of the original two-dimensional works of art.

In addition to the extensive camera flight through the titanic architecture, Dupond also used CINEMA 4D to explore the etching in detail and focus on the smallest details: The camera hovers over frescos and reliefs, focuses its attention on lonely figures in hidden alcoves and explores maltreated figures and tortured prisoners, and shows the viewer details that would have otherwise been overlooked.
The impressive result of Duponts efforts shows how pure inspiration and CINEMA 4D can be combined to achieve spectacular results without requiring large technical or logistic investments – and within a reasonable budget!

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