Passerelle du Pont-au-Change, après l'incendie de 1621 (The Footbridge temporarily replacing the Pont-au-Change, Paris, after the fire of 1621, after Della Bella) 1860

Curator: I am immediately struck by the overall mood – a sort of fragile stillness hanging in the air. Editor: We’re looking at Charles Meryon’s etching from 1860, "Passerelle du Pont-au-Change, après l'incendie de 1621." He made it after a drawing by Della Bella. You sense that fragility acutely in the architecture. The titular footbridge is just so… precarious. Curator: Precarious but functional, I imagine, patched together in response to the destruction. There’s a certain improvisational, almost slapdash quality to it that I find intriguing. You can practically smell the charred timbers. Editor: Exactly. I want to point out that this work isn’t a straightforward depiction of the event itself but a layered engagement. Meryon meticulously recreates Bella’s drawing, filtering it through his own 19th-century lens. Think about the labor involved here. Meryon is mediating another artist's representation of a disaster centuries prior. Curator: So you’re suggesting it’s not merely about documenting history, but about the layers of representation, of human responses to catastrophe as it’s remembered and recreated? There’s something about the detail in the boats on the water, the way the light hits… I keep thinking of how materials tell us about trade and how bridges are all about that, connecting economies but also always being so very vulnerable. Editor: The print itself acts like the footbridge in the picture - temporary. Meryon is always looking to the past to describe the current, and what might become the future, given time and perhaps tragedy. It is thought-provoking. Curator: It is. You've given me something to think about. Editor: Likewise. Meryon often does that.