Design for the Proscenium Arch of a Theatre with Two Trumpeting Angels Holding a Cartouche 1700 - 1780

Curator: Oh, this drawing sings to me. Here we have a "Design for the Proscenium Arch of a Theatre with Two Trumpeting Angels Holding a Cartouche," dating back to somewhere between 1700 and 1780. It resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a humble watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink rendering, on paper. What strikes you first? Editor: The stark emptiness at its center, almost jarring beneath all the ornamentation above. It's like the grandest doorway leading to...nowhere. Melancholy grandiosity? Curator: That void does demand attention, doesn't it? Proscenium arches are thresholds. The angels, symbols of divine communication and fanfare, frame a space. But what happens beyond that cartouche? Are they announcing something? Heralding an arrival? The void asks those questions, it opens a field of infinite potential, or disappointment. It speaks to that baroque sensibility, to artifice, and also a fear of the absence it might conceal. Editor: Yes! That tension is delicious. And the meticulous detail in the angels versus the barely sketched infrastructure, like glimpses into the mechanics of spectacle. The blushing pink supports contrast strangely with the serious geometry overall. It’s playfully theatrical even in its static, pre-performance form. Is that deliberate, that incompleteness? Curator: Baroque as a style reveled in layers of meaning and playful contrasts like these. I like to think this piece explores how authority communicates: with visual symbols meant to elevate and perhaps obscure, the role power and drama. It may simply have been a draft but the tension, for me, suggests commentary. Editor: It also echoes how deeply embedded stagecraft is within the cultural narrative. Angels, announcing with flourish...I wonder who commissioned it, and what stories would have been told under its arch. Curator: Unknown, but imagining those stories becomes the true artwork, in a sense. Editor: So, from mere sketch to theatrical possibilities…I’ll take that.