Portret van Joost Sijbrandtsz. Buyck 1749 - 1796

Curator: Here we have a Baroque portrait engraving titled "Portret van Joost Sijbrandtsz. Buyck," made sometime between 1749 and 1796 by Jacob Houbraken. Editor: The texture! All those fine, delicate lines. It looks almost…frosty. There's a stillness about him. And such meticulous detail in his fur stole. Curator: Houbraken really excelled in portrait engravings, often reproducing paintings. I imagine there was a social expectation to depict the sitter accurately. The lines would be so precisely placed and painstakingly engraved. Editor: Right. Because each line had to carry a tonal weight, a narrative of labor as much as likeness. The engraver's hand, the copper plate, the biting acid, the printing press…it's all there, embodied in the print. It speaks to the economic realities, the skilled craftsmanship required to make even a seemingly simple image accessible to a broader audience. He looks prosperous, as well he might, in that fur. How was it sourced, I wonder? Curator: The rigid composition of the portrait probably conveyed the subject's status and importance. He looks fairly severe in his oval frame! I feel a strange sympathy for him, a kind of wistful distance. Editor: Distance is right, in terms of time but also the art object itself. It's interesting to consider prints, like this one, as early forms of media, mediating identity through reproduction. Consider the socio-economic implications: Who commissioned it? How many were made? Who could afford them? Curator: I find myself thinking about the person behind the name on the inscription, a fleeting mayor from long ago, briefly resurrected. I almost wonder what the scent of the ink must have been back then… Editor: Yes. And maybe the acid, biting the plate, smelled sharp with purpose, of ambition realized, material value made manifest in reproducible form. That’s the power in thinking through materiality, no? Curator: Exactly. Thanks for prompting a different vision of what it means to be material! Editor: My pleasure, its a lovely artwork, and a lens into both artistry and industry.