Ruïne van de gebouwen aan het Plein van de Patriarchen in Lissabon, 1755 1758 - 1760

Curator: This print, "Ruins of the buildings on the Terreiro do Paço Square in Lisbon, 1755," rendered in engraving between 1758 and 1760, captures a stark cityscape by an anonymous artist. The image sits before us as a broken monument to a broken city. Editor: My immediate impression is one of overwhelming desolation. The sky feels heavy, almost mirroring the rubble below. It's as if the very heavens are mourning. What’s particularly striking is how such destruction is rendered with such...delicacy. Curator: Indeed, there's a strange beauty in witnessing such devastation through the precise lines of an engraving. It transforms a historical catastrophe, the Great Lisbon Earthquake, into a spectacle for contemplation. And it asks, what do we do with what’s left? Editor: It really foregrounds questions around power and its fallibility. We often discuss monuments as symbols of strength, but this print lays bare how vulnerable such symbols can be. Think of the political ramifications. Lisbon was a major colonial power – this earthquake and its visual representations like this one become deeply entwined with narratives of empire in crisis. The focus on these ruins is far from politically neutral. Curator: Exactly. It highlights the ephemeral nature of power, how quickly the seemingly permanent can be reduced to rubble. Though look how life persists even amidst the debris. Tiny figures roam the scene—survivors picking through the wreckage or just beginning to rebuild a life, carrying forward their legacy and their stories, one stone at a time. Editor: The figures emphasize the human cost. And the fact that it’s an engraving—a medium often used for dissemination of information—suggests an attempt to not only document the disaster but to also grapple with the broader socio-political implications of such devastation on European self-perception. The aestheticization is, in a way, a method of processing collective trauma at a distance. Curator: Trauma seen at one remove, yes, and memorialized with what tools one had to hand at the time. These lines create a window through time, allowing us to reflect on the transience of civilization. What resonates most for you? Editor: The unflinching look at vulnerability of systems, reminding us that structures, no matter how grand, are susceptible to nature's raw power and that the visual rhetoric in art serves either to preserve or overturn systems of belief. Curator: A truly enduring reminder, transformed into the language of beauty.