Frontispiece. A group of fragments and decorative marble plaque on the largest of which is engraved: Antiques Cora described. 

Artist: Wow, that is imposing. Almost monumental in its darkness, right? Curator: Indeed. We’re looking at “Frontispiece. A group of fragments and decorative marble plaque on the largest of which is engraved: Antiques Cora described.,” an engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Just look at that dense crosshatching. It's practically architectural in itself. Artist: Architectural in the rendering, perhaps mirroring its subject! To me, there is an alluring gothic mystery. It calls to mind Piranesi’s imagined prisons. Except instead of being trapped *within* structures, you feel the weight of geological immensity *around* you. Curator: What captures my attention is how Piranesi showcases not only the ruins themselves, but also the raw materials that constitute them. See the fractured rock face taking center stage? It's as if he wants us to ponder the quarry, the source, the immense labor that went into the building, the subsequent fall and re-emergence of stone itself! Artist: It's so dramatic! Even the figures are dwarfed and caught, to my eyes, in a precarious struggle on the mountainside. But beyond the immediate narrative, for me, it's about time, you know? The geological clock, human ambition...all compressed onto this mountainside, rendered in ink. Curator: Precisely. That geological clock, as you call it, ticks alongside the rhythms of extraction, of human exploitation of resources. You mentioned the figures struggling. And I would say their laboring presence forces us to ask: who shaped these stones, and for what ends? Artist: Yes! We bring such force to our making and breaking. And you can almost feel that reverberating here, on paper, pressed into it, an eternal reminder. Curator: It becomes so much more than just an image of ruins. We witness material history etched into its very grain. Thinking of that process really makes you understand our ever-present intervention. Artist: Agreed! Well said, I see it anew with this material lens. A little unnerving! Thanks. Curator: And I can't deny that your interpretation has awakened in me an almost artistic sense of longing for something lost. It really is haunting, after all.