Architectural Complex. Verso: sketch of colonnade

The oblique perspective from which these buildings are depicted, the foreground cut by a balcony that leaves the viewer nowhere to stand, and even the heavy iron rings held by the lion heads relate to the architectural vocabulary of the Carceri, which Piranesi was conceiving around the same time that he executed this drawing. The dense washes and energetic lines are also typical of his style in the late 1740s.