Landscape with Classical Architecture by a Lake 17th century

This landscape drawing was made by an anonymous artist using pen and brown ink, over traces of graphite. Here, the artist is working with conventional materials, but to striking effect. Notice the way the brown ink takes on different tonal values, depending on how densely it has been applied. In the right-hand foreground, the ink is built up in short hatched marks, giving the impression of deep shadow and weighty form. By contrast, the artist uses very light touches to indicate the clouds and distant mountains. The entire composition is made from these close observations and renderings of surfaces and light. The labor involved in the drawing feels very different to that of the architecture depicted. Think of the quarries, stonemasons, and carvers who would have created these monuments, only fragments of which remain. While this drawing might seem modest in scale, it's a reminder of the skill needed to reduce grand structures to paper. It encourages us to reflect on the amount of labor required to produce both the built environment and the artworks that represent it.