The Hammock Papers: Expansive.

02 February 2023

Expansive.

Bretez, Plan of Paris, 1734

This expansive engraved view of Paris covers the first eleven arrondissements of modern Paris. With a combined width of over ten feet, the joined plan makes for an arresting centerpiece. Turgot's is perhaps the best record of Paris in the 18th century, before its transformation by Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Emperor Napoleon III. It is widely regarded as one of the most important city views of all time.

The Mayor of Paris, Michel-Étienne Turgot, commissioned Louis Bretez, a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc to create an impressive image of the city. He was given license to survey wherever he needed and could enter private property if the task required. The end result was to be a statement piece, one which was presented to dignitaries, foreign and domestic alike, to reinforce their esteem of Paris.

Historians suspect that Bretez was awarded the commission in part because of the work he had already done on architectural perspective, some of which was published in his 1706 book La perspective pratique de l'architecture . Claude Lucas was Bretez's engraver.

A detailed view of this wonder is available at Barry Lawrence Ruderman.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL