Portret van Carle van Loo 1754

Curator: Hmm, this print is a striking profile. Gives me an odd, almost unsettling feeling. Is it just me, or is there something rather… severe about this portrait? Editor: Well, let’s unpack that feeling. What we’re looking at is “Portret van Carle van Loo,” an engraving by Jean Daullé from 1754, now residing here at the Rijksmuseum. He's rendered Van Loo, the famous painter, with remarkable detail. The materiality here is key: engraving, with its reliance on the burin and the creation of clean, precise lines, perfectly captures the aristocratic mood. Curator: Precisely! The lines are so definite, so unyielding. The crispness gives him an air of cool detachment…as if he were observing you. The whole oval design—a very Baroque sensibility, of course—reminds me of peering at royalty on an old coin. Gives me the sense of someone supremely conscious of being observed by posterity. Editor: And that's no accident. Engraving in this era was less about artistic expression than about reproduction and dissemination. Think about the skilled labor involved, the time invested in translating a painted portrait into a readily distributable image for a wider, increasingly literate audience. It speaks to the rising influence and power of print culture. Curator: Rising, yes, but it also echoes something of the old world’s stiff formalities—you can sense the engraver striving to make it both "new" in that sense and timeless at once. That little ribbon at the top of the frame; the whole thing suggests an idea about hierarchy. Still, this isn't without flair, that is baroque elegance, and how to capture it through means of mass production, not least through Daulle’s craftsmanship... Editor: Definitely. And that ribbon is echoed in the beautifully rendered texture of the subject’s hair. Even details like the layering of horizontal lines surrounding the central portrait speak volumes of its social purpose; namely to disseminate this person’s image. To the idea of branding even, to which so many means are dedicated to a common task, to make people talk about Van Loo. The work embodies, like a vessel, a moment where high art brushes up against popular culture through its technological reproducibility. Curator: Hmm. You’ve given me pause. Perhaps the feeling of detachment I’m getting isn't severity as much as an awareness of how closely portraiture and power are aligned here…It's something so striking for such a little thing that, with its technical rigor and inherent function, somehow renders him so much bigger than this "Van Loo". It all reflects an effort, now lost, on becoming somebody, to begin with, the artwork. Editor: Indeed, what appears austere on the surface is rich with implications about material culture, production and consumption in 18th century.