Titelpagina voor 'Het Groot Fransch en Nederduitsch Woordenboek' 1708

Curator: Let’s discuss this engraving from 1708. The Rijksmuseum holds this title page created by Gideon Quineau for 'Het Groot Fransch en Nederduitsch Woordenboek'– 'The Great French and Dutch Dictionary'. Editor: It feels remarkably grandiose for what's essentially a book cover. Look at this assembly of allegorical figures. Curator: Exactly. The allegorical figures are key. The goddess Mercuria presides at the top, and it seems she is in the center of a global debate as Hermes's staff passes by. Below, you see figures representing erudition and labor. The statue to the left alludes to antiquity while a sailing fleet represents an interconnected, and expansive contemporary world— commerce enabled through translation itself. We see these narratives intersecting across a time frame that extends well beyond 1708, with very real socio-economic implications related to early mercantile capitalism. Editor: I find Mercuria's positioning above the globe quite striking. The globe seems less about geographic accuracy, and more about the universality of language and knowledge itself. It projects a certain confidence, doesn't it? I read these ships in the background as a reflection of global engagement, or the early stages of colonial outreach through linguistic expansion. The figure that wields a scythe and appears ready to destroy, makes me wonder what it means for culture, in terms of mortality. Curator: Yes, that symbolic link between language and cultural dominance is fascinating. The way the visual language positions European knowledge production as superior also mirrors, on a deeper level, how translation was itself perceived in the late 17th, early 18th centuries: A mechanism through which to assert cultural and political power. Also consider here gender representation in connection to that. It tells its own story of who is empowered through knowing multiple languages. Editor: So true! What appeared on first viewing as simply ornamental, really encapsulates the broader socio-political atmosphere in which such a dictionary becomes a valuable tool, a cultural treasure even, given its place in facilitating trade and power. Language as a symbolic source of conflict, too. Curator: Precisely, which shows that in the realm of symbolic communication nothing is ever truly neutral, even a dictionary can reflect the ambitions and anxieties of its era.