Monime 1647

Curator: Here we have Gilles Rousselet's engraving, "Monime," dating back to 1647. It currently resides at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: Oh, she's intense. Powerful, maybe even a little bit scary? The way she’s just...there, emanating authority, but with this unsettling looseness in her expression, makes me wonder what’s beneath that regal pose. Curator: Let’s unpack that a bit. Monime was a historical figure, a Greek woman married to Mithridates VI of Pontus. Her life was defined by political intrigue and ultimately, a forced suicide. The engraving situates Monime as an actor escaping tyranny. Editor: Forced suicide...That’s bleak. I get a slightly different read now, knowing the story. There is a real disconnect between the serene queen persona, with all the jewelry and the confident pose, and, what are those snakes she's holding? Those details give off an aura of utter defeat, hidden strength, all kinds of crazy complex vibes! Curator: The snakes, you're spot on, symbolize the means of her suicide, underscoring the theme of escaping tyranny through self-determination, even in death. Think of this work, too, in the context of the mid-17th century; the image, made via an accessible medium like engraving, becomes an easily reproducible, widely distributed emblem. It's a conversation starter, perhaps, a way to promote discourses about power and agency. Editor: You see conversations, I just see so many layers. What is her story, what got left out, who told it, what are the intentions, and, yes, as you stated: Who *didn't* get to have this much control. You are so right! I get almost distracted by what looks to be a play performing in the backdrop—another set of unfolding lives, another kind of power being displayed. Even the style and the composition feed back into the intensity of her stance, it amplifies how *caught* Monime appears to be. Curator: The backdrop adds another dimension, as you note, reflecting contemporary staging. Ultimately, in bringing together Rousselet's lines with history, what emerges, for me, is the power of representation and the potential for a complex layering of meanings in single artistic gestures. Editor: And for me, I see that it reminds me how art is this crazy process: creating something as a way to maybe actually be, feel, see or know something too huge for any of our individual, fleeting selves to grasp on our own. I'm glad that the museum brings together artists of completely different visions so we get glimpses into those alternate viewpoints of a single subject.