Portret van Inacho Melchior Fernández de Velasco y Tovar 1669

Curator: Here we have Richard Collin's 1669 engraving, “Portret van Inacho Melchior Fernández de Velasco y Tovar,” a captivating portrait rendered in the baroque style and currently residing at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Wow, the armor steals the show for me. It’s so intensely detailed it’s almost playful. It gleams, it’s rigid but also flowing and the dude inside? I imagine him completely sweltering. Curator: Right. The armor is interesting on multiple levels. Consider, for instance, the historical moment. Military might, embodied in figures like Velasco y Tovar, shaped global politics and economics through colonial endeavors. To fully engage with an image like this we also have to consider the violence wielded under this armor. Editor: It makes me think about protection and pretense. He’s got that whole scene of battle happening behind him, which is great visual storytelling. Almost operatic. Does the armor represent this powerful guy's personal convictions or simply an expected social role? Curator: That's where things get fascinating. Was it about personal courage, or the construction of an identity meant to legitimize power through visual spectacle? The layered imagery and inscription really speaks to the ways individuals carefully fashioned a legacy, a crafted selfhood ready for the historical record. Editor: He looks bored stiff. Almost like he'd rather be hanging out at some 17th-century cafe, swapping stories with friends and drinking...whatever it was they drank back then. Curator: The seeming languor complicates the traditional idea of martial authority. This also prompts me to consider the conditions and demands of portraiture in that period, and the ways it participates in maintaining social hierarchies of gender, class, and power. Editor: I find myself picturing the engraver, Richard Collin, spending painstaking hours scratching that tiny line work onto the plate. It's like an insane form of dedication, an act of near-meditative commitment. Curator: Engaging with these historical images calls on us to consider labor, technology, class dynamics, and personal narrative simultaneously. It provides, I think, a complex map of our human and non-human relations. Editor: This old print makes me reflect on who we decide to immortalize through art, and why. A powerful dude in shiny armor? Okay. It makes you wonder about all the silent stories, lost in time, still waiting to be told.