Portico 28 - 1830

Curator: This delicate drawing is titled "Portico," created by Friedrich Maximilian Hessemer between 1828 and 1830. It's rendered with pencil on paper, and enhanced with etching, offering a study of form in architecture. You can see it here at the Städel Museum. Editor: Immediately, I’m struck by its ghostly quality. It's incomplete, suggestive, almost like a memory fading. The arches hint at a grand structure, yet the sketch feels so intimate and personal. Curator: That's a great point. Hessemer wasn't necessarily creating a precise architectural record. This was likely a page from a personal sketchbook, an informal observation during his travels and research of medieval architecture. He’s thinking about its cultural position in contemporary German society. Editor: Absolutely, and it feels infused with the weight of that history. The archway, the lone pillar, evoke something of the ancient world—a time when porticos signified power, transition, and sacred space. The emptiness of the space beyond also lends it an ethereal feel. Curator: It is fascinating how Hessemer presents us with what’s *missing*. There are uncompleted architectural elements, maybe intended as reminders that everything declines or, perhaps, this fragment embodies ideals about form over function that pervaded the aesthetic sphere. Editor: Those uncompleted spaces really lend it that liminal, symbolic feeling, don’t they? The incompleteness makes it feel like it represents more than just a structure – the idea of human progress, maybe. Curator: Indeed. And given Hessemer’s scholarly interests in making available what were understood as historically pure building models, such representations of specific aesthetic principles were quite powerful and impactful at the time. Editor: So, we see this artwork now divorced from those period aesthetics – what new principles and histories are infused into our experience when viewing today? How has the meaning transformed? Curator: A question every viewer can engage with based on their own experiences, I think! I like the prospect that "Portico," in all its simplicity, poses these challenges and connects viewers to layers of socio-cultural context. Editor: A truly resonant example, I think, of how a seemingly simple architectural sketch can hold within it so much symbolic and cultural weight. Thank you for guiding us through this artwork and its rich history!