Portret Maria de' Medici met stamboom 1619 - 1632

Curator: Wow, what a dizzying yet captivating creation! Editor: You've nailed it! I am thinking it makes the idea of being powerful a little nutty? The Baroque style feels turned up to eleven here! We are looking at a print, an engraving to be exact, titled "Portret Maria de' Medici met stamboom," or "Portrait of Maria de' Medici with Family Tree," from 1619-1632. It's by Lucas Vorsterman I, residing at the Rijksmuseum. I almost see it as proto-surreal! Curator: A "family tree" growing royally absurd fruit, if you will! Each bloom seems to bear a crowned head, Marie de’ Medici’s regal relatives! How are we meant to read such constructed lineage? It’s as if she’s asserting something about power and inherited greatness. Editor: The symbolism is layered deep! The gushing urns held by those almost Greco-Roman personifications at the base are linked to abundance and the flowing of power downwards, presumably, on those that she oversees. A very classical vision married to the rising monarchial system. Even that prominent collar feels a little "holier than thou"! The very posture in which the tree almost has its root springing from her neck—makes me uncomfortable, maybe a little in awe? Curator: Indeed! Consider the period when Vorsterman I etched this image, in the early to mid-17th century. Baroque art reveled in theatricality and ornamentation to impress upon the viewer. This work positions Marie as the matriarch, the source of this family’s, and by extension, France’s strength and continuity. And the pen drawing aesthetic enhances a feeling of timeless authority, like a decree chiseled for centuries to see and obey. It looks…deliberate! Editor: It speaks to the period of royal portraiture as an exercise of almost "mystic power". You had a painted god on earth to obey. We look and might smirk at its gaudiness and allegorical overload but it worked, for then it held the very image of authority as a type of religious experience and expression of social values and spiritual beliefs that informed daily life. Curator: True, and something still holds for the contemporary world...perhaps why these potent, slightly bonkers, images, keep pulling our eyes towards them in the present. Editor: Well, it’s a thorny, florid family tree that asks some strange questions about images, memory and cultural belief.