Dimensions: height 401 mm, width 557 mm
Copyright: Rijks Museum: Open Domain
Curator: Here we have Giovanni Battista Vanni's "Hemelvaart van Maria (linker deel)," or "Assumption of Mary (left part)," created in 1642. It's an engraving, teeming with figures ascending on a swirling cloud. Editor: It’s visually arresting. The sheer density of bodies crowded into those cloud formations is both fascinating and slightly unsettling. It feels… unstable, almost as if the composition itself might collapse. Curator: The instability you perceive might reflect the social upheavals of the Baroque era. Consider the context: The Catholic Church, a major patron of the arts, used such imagery to reaffirm its authority amidst the challenges of the Protestant Reformation. The extravagance mirrors an assertion of power. Editor: But the production itself! Engraving at this scale, so detailed, represents an immense amount of labor. Someone meticulously transferred this image onto the plate, and each print requires that level of exactness. Who were these artisans, and what was their role in propagating this ideology? Curator: Precisely. While Vanni conceived the image, it was the engravers who disseminated it widely. These prints circulated among different social classes, acting as powerful tools for religious instruction and, of course, social control. It's history made manifest through reproducible imagery. Editor: And it is so physical! We have the ink, the paper, the press— the labor-intensive process itself imbuing meaning into the work. What do we make of the material reality of image making in 17th century Europe, and its intersection with power structures. Curator: It reminds us that even the most ethereal subjects – a heavenly ascension – are grounded in the earthly realities of production, patronage, and religious politics. Editor: Absolutely, to focus only on the religious theme obscures the layers of human effort woven into its very being, its accessibility and impact. I'll certainly never view it the same again. Curator: Nor I, this lens really sheds a new light on the print.
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