Interieur van St. Martin's Church te Brighton before 1889

Editor: So, here we have an engraving, likely printed, of the “Interieur van St. Martin's Church te Brighton," dating to before 1889. The stark perspective immediately pulls you into the vastness of the church, but it also feels somehow…empty, a little desolate even. What catches your eye in this piece? Curator: Oh, this whisper of a place… it breathes a silent story, doesn't it? To me, it’s like catching a glimpse of a memory, something half-remembered and already fading. It’s an echo chamber of faith, a monument trying to grapple with its solitude. Look at how the linear perspective amplifies the cavernous space, pushing the viewer deeper and deeper into a silence only architecture can hold. Editor: So the perspective is making you feel more…alone? Curator: Precisely! But there's a strange comfort in that solitude, no? Almost like the architecture itself is praying. I imagine light filtering through those high windows, each pane a stained-glass saint guarding secrets, and hear only the faintest hum of the ages… Does it give you that same haunting thrill, or do you feel something else? Editor: I do get that stillness you're talking about. For me, it is also about this rigid and neat architecture, yet it's just an engraving. Something so fixed represented through such fleeting materials of paper and ink, from so long ago... Curator: The impermanence holding onto forever...yes! Think of all those worshippers, prayers whispered, hopes rising like incense smoke. And here we are, peering through time, sensing only that fragile echo…it’s wonderfully poignant. I find myself wanting to reach out, touch the coolness of the stone, and become part of its lasting narrative. Maybe this is why art moves us so, by allowing to dream ourselves into those other worlds that existed and ceased. Editor: Definitely food for thought! I didn't see all that at first, I just felt its mood and perspective, but it's clearly doing so much more with those ideas of loneliness and remembrance.