Nôtre Dame, Paris. 1828

David Roberts made this view of Nôtre Dame in Paris with pen, ink and watercolour. Although we think of drawing as immediate, in this case it’s a considered process, focused on the patient accumulation of detail. Look at the façade of the cathedral, and how Roberts has built up its texture, arch by arch, window by window. The architecture itself was, of course, also a product of intensive labor. Medieval cathedrals were vast workshops, where generations of stone carvers, stained glass artists, and carpenters came together. Roberts, by documenting the cathedral, offers a snapshot of his own time – a moment of relative peace, before the even greater urban transformations that Paris would soon undergo. The drawing underscores how artistic creation is always intertwined with a broader matrix of human effort. Roberts invites us to appreciate the deep history embedded in Notre Dame, a testament to collective craftsmanship across the ages.