Tools for masonry and agriculture 

Curator: This print, titled "Tools for masonry and agriculture," is by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Executed using etching and engraving techniques, it depicts tools uncovered in Pompeii. What's your initial impression? Editor: Stark. There's an almost ghostly quality, a kind of post-archaeological melancholy, looking at the outlines of old forgotten purposes. Like ghosts of usefulness! Curator: Piranesi, working in the Neoclassical period, was fascinated by Roman antiquity. This print reflects the 18th-century obsession with classical civilizations, showcasing the objects of everyday life alongside grander architectural ruins. Editor: The composition is brilliant—the arrangement feels so deliberately casual, but there's an undeniable balance. All of these hand tools rendered so exactingly make me imagine the human hands, now dust, that held them, made things. It really is sad to me in a weird way! Curator: The choice to depict tools associated with building and agriculture speaks volumes. Masonry, of course, alludes to the monumental architecture of Rome, while the agricultural tools root us in the daily toil that supported that empire. Editor: True. You feel a sense of industry; the world being formed out of the dirt and shaped for better harvests. But then there’s the decay that hints at things lost to time. And this particular, slightly flattened perspective seems to emphasize that these shapes, preserved only in metal and art, used to occupy a solid space. It makes them very immediate and oddly touching. Curator: Exactly! And Piranesi, beyond his archaeological documentation, was commenting on the cyclical nature of civilizations – creation, flourishing, decay – a theme resonant in his more fantastical prints. Editor: Yes, seeing them all together feels like holding history in your hands… Or maybe, looking at all the means by which it's built and lost again. Anyway, that's quite thought provoking. Curator: Absolutely. It underlines that his interests extended beyond documenting artifacts; he was exploring the very idea of civilization. Editor: I’ll certainly not be seeing the toolbox the same way after this…