Plate XII of the Carceri d’Invenzione, in the fifth state, with the letter ‘C’ added before Piranesi’s signature for Cavaliere, after the etcher was created Cavaliere dello Speron d'oro, Knight of the Golden Spur, by Pope Clement XIII in 1765. Among Piranesi’s earliest plates, perhaps begun in Venice during his two year return to the city, 1645-47. The first edition was published for Piranesi by Bouchard & Gravier in Rome, in three issues between 1749 and 1760, with the title Invenzioni capric di Carceri. Early in the 1760’s and in the following years Piranesi reworked the plates extensively, making them darker, and introducing dramatic new motifs related to punishment and torture. Of his architectural fantasies, Piranesi commented: The speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings could never have succeeded in conveying.