Romeinse ruïnes 1782 - 1837

Pieter Bartholomeusz. Barbiers made this watercolor painting of Roman ruins sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. It is an image of architecture, a built environment. But also, it is a product of labor. To make the original ruins, countless laborers would have extracted the stone, prepared it, and fitted it into place. Here, Barbiers uses watercolor paint – pigment suspended in water, applied with a brush – to convey the texture and the weight of the original materials. The technique is delicate, but the subject is monumental. While this may have been made as a simple souvenir, in its own way, this small painting evokes the much larger processes of extraction, production, and human effort which went into the original construction. It reminds us to consider the labor embedded in all things, whether ancient or modern, 'art' or 'architecture.'