Portret van Stefanus Báthory, koning van Polen en grootvorst van Litouwen 1751

Curator: Hmm, imposing! Is it just me, or does that hat have a kind of sly... pomposity about it? Like it's daring you to challenge its owner? Editor: Quite. What strikes me is how Jan Punt, working in 1751, uses the engraving medium to depict, very self-consciously I believe, a likeness of Stefanus B\u00e1thory, who was the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, in 1586, almost 200 years earlier. Curator: Engraving, right, so all those precise little lines, like a meticulously built fortress... Editor: Indeed. Consider how Punt orchestrates line and tone to construct B\u00e1thory's features within that firm oval frame, and mounted on its formal plinth, an elaborate structure designed to memorialize the King's various titles. Curator: It does feel staged, doesn't it? Like we’re not getting the man, just the idea of the man... a sort of frozen power pose from a bygone era. Though those eyes... they almost crack through the artifice a little, don't you think? As if hinting at a story beyond royal pronouncements? Editor: Perhaps, but structurally the face adheres to very formal and recognizable types. We have the Baroque-style flourishes suggesting dynamism but note how it is strictly contained and tightly controlled. The whole engraving really does reveal the rigid expectations inherent in state portraiture. It's all very studied in its deployment of semiotic codes associated with nobility and authority. Curator: It does speak volumes, even silently. Although, maybe, for all that careful posing, B\u00e1thory, wherever he is, is having a good chuckle about the fuss? I like that thought somehow, imagining a quiet rebel hidden within the official image! Editor: A charming fancy, to be sure! I myself will think about how line becomes meaning in this fascinating engraving from the Rijksmuseum’s collection.