Kindermoord te Betlehem 1579 - 1582

Curator: This engraving, made between 1579 and 1582 by Johann Sadeler I, is titled "Kindermoord te Bethlehem," depicting the Massacre of the Innocents. Editor: Wow, that’s… intense. The composition is so dynamic, yet the subject matter makes me feel a kind of icy dread. Look at the frenzy in those figures' faces, almost ecstatic! The texture of the lines feels almost scratchy, like nails on a chalkboard. Curator: It’s certainly a visceral depiction. Sadeler, working within the Mannerist style, had a skilled workshop which produced an extraordinary number of prints like these which were distributed widely across Europe, shaping visual culture. Think of it: the materials—metal plates, ink, paper—facilitating the broad dissemination of a horrific scene. Editor: It's bizarrely elegant in its rendering, you know? The level of detail! Each anguished face is so painstakingly rendered, especially in light of the brutality being enacted. Is it the engraving medium lending the figures an extra dimension? I think it's unsettling in the best kind of art historical way. Curator: Consider the market. These prints weren't created in a vacuum. Who commissioned them? Who bought them, and how did they serve devotional, political, or didactic purposes within specific social circles? It speaks volumes about the appetite for these violent scenes and the normalizing impact it would have, generation after generation. Editor: True, it's important to remember the piece as both aesthetic and propagandistic. Still, when I look, I’m mostly feeling empathy. Seeing these terrified women clutching at their children, so vulnerably human— it shakes me. What would have motivated an artist to even conceive such a grim composition? Curator: Artistic choices and the use of line, as well as who’s buying the finished artwork. Editor: Exactly. Still, its darkness sticks with you. This conversation has deepened the shiver the print is giving me!