Tuin bestaande uit verschillende parterres c. 1587 - 1640

Curator: What a wonderfully ordered little world! This print, "Tuin bestaande uit verschillende parterres" or "Garden consisting of several parterres," hails from somewhere between 1587 and 1640. Etching, engraving, a dash of drawing... a real mixed bag of intaglio techniques, and all attributed to an anonymous artist. I am interested in your first impression. Editor: My first thought? Anxiety! That's an elaborate maze down there in the foreground, a whole theatre of decisions rendered in meticulously etched lines. Curator: Indeed. It's the formal garden in excelsis. Renaissance gardens were expressions of power, right? Taming nature. This bird's-eye view flattens everything. The tiny trees in the labyrinth look almost like chess pieces. Editor: Yes! And it seems more about intellectual control than sensory delight, at least at first glance. Those rigidly defined geometric shapes... the parterres resembling miniature rooms or stages. What kind of symbolic weight would these forms hold? The square of rationality perhaps and the circle of perfect, divine form? Curator: I like the chess analogy. It hints at hidden meanings, coded messages maybe, or an idealized reflection of power and social hierarchy, laid out as meticulously as one's privilege. And it makes you think about hidden sightlines, who has the advantage. Editor: It also makes me think of cultural memory, those designs borrow from Persian gardens in early Renaissance... an exchange and mutation of signs through ages, don't you think? An endless echo between nature, design, and symbolism. It seems to say, “We know how the universe works... more or less. We have made some changes... but the past it there." Curator: Ah, the hubris of order! The artist, whomever they were, shows how humans tried to dominate Nature’s bounty! Makes you wonder what kind of secret dramas played out behind those precisely trimmed hedges! Or where is the place for passion! It also represents its moment so well - a kind of dance between wanting to break out from established structures but then maintaining its strong framework. Editor: Exactly! The passion may hide, waiting to get revealed to whoever that can master such labyrinth. I leave this thought with our listeners to embrace the image in silence for some thought of the self! Curator: And perhaps inspire everyone to get slightly lost—if not in a literal garden, then maybe in the lovely tangled pathways of their own minds!