View of the ancient tomb, called La Conocchia, on the Appian Way, near Capua

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was one of the finest printmakers in eighteenth-century Italy. And one of the most productive. His many etchings (numbering more than 1,000 in total) are distinctive in several ways, including in terms of size. Their formats are unusually large for prints. The copper plates used to create etchings were expensive, and the larger the format, the more expensive the work – and therefore more difficult to sell. Piranisi’s motifs are almost exclusively actual buildings from Rome and the surrounding area, and he was particularly interested in architecture from antiquity. Although most of the buildings can be recognised from real life, they seem strangely alien and unrealistic. Piranesi has distorted their proportions, as is the case in this representation of an antique sepulchral monument, which in the real world is quite modest in scale. Here it seems impressive and grand. The tiny, eerie figures crawling around the edifice partly serve to indicate scale and partly help give the scene a darkly disturbing air: it becomes incomprehensible, difficult to grasp. The large piece of paper, on which the printing ink clearly asserts itself as material, speaks to our senses – and makes the scene almost magical (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection).