Bovenste gedeelte van een bokaal, bestaande uit een cuppa en een hoog deksel c. 1500 - 1598

Curator: Oh, my, this is wonderfully strange. Like looking at a phantom blueprint. Editor: Indeed. What strikes you first? Well, before I start delving into its possible symbolic depths, let me introduce what we have here: this is an engraving, simply titled "Upper Part of a Goblet, Consisting of a Cup and a High Lid", dating roughly from 1500 to 1598. The maker? Alas, anonymous. But it resides in the esteemed collection of the Rijksmuseum. Curator: Phantom, exactly! It's all curlicues and stern faces and this miniature world tucked away in the middle. So austere, yet there's this almost…playful detail. What *is* that little scene at the bottom? Editor: Ah, the embedded narrative! This little scene reminds me of memento mori traditions, little death reminders that serve a higher existential meaning, so prevalent at the time. I find it to be a very active way to create a contrast and a powerful connection, death to goblet. Do you agree? Curator: Absolutely, a fleeting world framed within an object intended for…celebration? Commemoration, perhaps? Maybe of a life, rather than life itself? You know, now I’m seeing this old guy right at the top looking utterly severe; is it me, or he could pass for an impatient Roman emperor. Editor: Precisely! Look at the prominent imagery here. The heads with billowing cheeks—classical representations of the wind— flanking the vista, the whole tableau is positively dripping with the visual rhetoric of power. Even in its relatively small scale, it seems determined to announce some weighty truth. Curator: And yet… it's just the *top* of a goblet. Imagine the complete object; it must have been breathtaking. Although, you know, all this weightiness actually brings to mind just how fragile and temporal earthly power and achievement truly is. Editor: You nailed it! Isn't it striking how a few lines etched centuries ago can evoke such contemplation? Even an unfinished engraving serves to be eternal, somehow...