Plan om de Bibliothèque nationale te Parijs te beschermen tegen brand 1797 - 1798

This print was made by Pierre Gabriel Berthault, outlining a plan to protect the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris from fire. Look closely, and you’ll see that the print itself becomes an argument about material production. Berthault used etching and engraving. These are essentially reproductive media: ink is pressed into the paper after being captured by incised lines. But in this case, the print records an even more laborious process: the construction of elaborate scaffolding around the library, with hundreds of figures participating in the effort. We see them passing buckets of water, presumably to douse any flames. It’s an image of pre-industrial labour, coordinated on a massive scale. The Bibliothèque nationale was then, as now, a storehouse of cultural memory – and here, that memory is being protected through brute physical effort, recorded in minute detail by the skilled printmaker. The artwork thus reminds us of the social processes that underpin even our most cherished institutions.