Portret van Giuseppe Lanzoni 1675 - 1727

Curator: Hello, and welcome. Today, we’re exploring Claude Duflos's engraving, "Portret van Giuseppe Lanzoni," dating sometime between 1675 and 1727. What's your first impression? Editor: Stately. The hair is doing all the talking, a frothy halo crowning what feels like a slightly melancholic face. The whole thing has this exquisitely mournful gravity about it. Curator: You keyed into the emotional register right away. Look closely at the hatching technique employed to depict depth and volume. Duflos was incredibly skilled at modulating light and shadow in his engravings, imbuing them with a life-like quality despite the constraints of the medium. See how he uses varied line weights and densities? Editor: I do. The linear precision of the engraving gives Lanzoni this austere bearing, and his gaze, it feels incredibly piercing, but not in a way that unsettles. There is some softness there as well, that comes from the expert gradation you mention, an embrace between shadow and highlight. Curator: Lanzoni was a physician and scholar of considerable renown, and I think Duflos captures the intellectual gravitas, the almost otherworldly patience such pursuits would demand. The oval frame creates its own sense of classical containment, but the riot of curly hair hints at some unruliness. Editor: Right! He's giving me cerebral and wild. But trapped, sort of. The confinement of the oval shape emphasizes an interesting opposition to all the unrestrained waves around his head. It creates a fascinating internal drama. Curator: The baroque sensibilities at play also. The decorative elements serve to honor not just the sitter but learning itself as an exercise, one requiring control, dedication, perhaps even sacrifice. Editor: Well, for me, that interplay between control and unruly emotion creates a captivating ambiguity, like Lanzoni might be hiding something fascinating beneath the surface. And maybe all those academic honors inscribed below are not all there is to him. Curator: A print of its time, reflecting prevailing cultural values while also hinting, as you note, at personal complexities. It's in this dialogue between artist, sitter, and the beholder, I suppose, where we discover true worth. Editor: I find its elegance deeply comforting.