Portret van een onbekende man 1831 - 1890

Editor: So, here we have "Portrait of an Unknown Man," a print made sometime between 1831 and 1890 by Jean Baptiste Pierre Michiels, hanging here at the Rijksmuseum. It's this really striking, quite serious portrait done in engraving. What leaps out to you when you look at it? Curator: You know, it's the mystery that gets me. He stares out with such directness, almost a challenge, doesn't he? I find myself inventing stories for him. A merchant perhaps, a scholar...someone wrestling with some big internal something or other, definitely sporting some incredible facial hair, but what do you think? What does this intense gaze spark in your imagination? Editor: It's the detail, isn't it? Especially in the beard! There is almost this hyper-realistic quality mixed with...well, not knowing him! How does that affect our reading, the fact it’s an unknown man? Curator: Exactly! We fill the void with our own projections, with fragments of history, of literature. He becomes a canvas for our own anxieties, our own aspirations. Notice the lines – so meticulously etched. There's love there, a fascination with form and shadow. The unknown… it’s freeing, in a way. No fixed narrative, only potential. Does it not make you want to grab your quill and ink, too? Editor: It definitely does! I mean, the dedication in the line-work gives him almost this monumental presence. So, not knowing the subject maybe doesn’t matter as much when we engage with a person that appears so vividly alive on the page. Curator: A good point – perhaps this unknown man transcends his identity; through the artist’s eye, the subject has secured some kind of strange immortality. He is known, but remains wonderfully, tantalizingly… unknown!