Hymen verbindt de huizen van Beieren en Bourgondië 1732

Editor: Here we have Bernard Picart’s 1732 print, "Hymen verbindt de huizen van Beieren en Bourgondië," at the Rijksmuseum. The intricacy is amazing! All these figures… it feels so staged, so deliberately symbolic. What’s your interpretation of this work? Curator: Indeed, the staging is crucial. It screams of Baroque spectacle, meant to legitimize power. Think of it as propaganda – a visual contract attempting to secure an alliance. The title translates to "Hymen connects the houses of Bavaria and Burgundy," but who benefits and who is marginalized in this idealized union? Look closely: which figures hold power, and whose voices are silenced? Editor: Well, it seems pretty top-down. Royals at the top of a stage are connecting families, while female allegorical figures seem to support it, holding shields of sorts. Curator: Exactly! Note how the female figures embodying Burgundy and Bavaria are passive recipients of this "connection," tools in a patriarchal game. The wedding becomes less about love, and more about dynasty, legacy and territory. And who decided that Hymen should do the connecting? Do you see alternative readings that resist this top-down narrative? Editor: Hmmm... Not immediately, no. It really does push this idea of dynastic imperative. Were there counter-narratives to these marriages, voiced at the time? Curator: Definitely. We need to examine sources outside these official pronouncements. Popular songs, subversive pamphlets—these often critiqued the elite’s political marriages and exposed underlying power dynamics. Question everything this image proclaims as harmonious and natural! Editor: This makes me look at the image in a different light! It is not just documenting something; it's doing something. Curator: Precisely. Now we need to delve deeper into the archive, into the dissenting voices of the era. Keep interrogating the visual rhetoric of power.