The Prison, plate VII, c. 1760 by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Piranesi was always very interested in architecture as his etchings prove. He set about recording the many great monuments and the architecture of Rome.
Another Take
“Dark Prison (Cacrere Oscura),” c.1790 by Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Turner is the most famous and prolific British painter of the 19th Century. His watercolors and oils record the buildings an events of his world. He also traveled throughout Europe and the British isles where he recorded what he saw. The work was inspired by the Italian artist Piranesi.
Herculaneum - The Redheaded Step Child
Pompeii A.D. 79 by Alfred Elmore, 1878, Yale Center for British Art
An exhibition entitled The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection opened on February 24th and runs through July 7, 2013 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibition features works inspired by the loss of the cities in 79 AD and their re-discovery in the early 18th century. It includes works by a wise range of artists from Piranesi and his detailed drawings of the site, to Rothko's abstract expressionist take on the murals from the Villa of the Mysteries.