Don Quichot, misleid door Sancho Pancho, ziet een boerin aan voor Dulcinea 1723 - 1736

Editor: So, here we have "Don Quichot, misleid door Sancho Pancho, ziet een boerin aan voor Dulcinea" from around the 1720s or 30s by Jean-Baptiste Haussard. It's an engraving. I’m immediately struck by the absurdity of the scene and that kind of slightly grotesque comedy from the figures being lampooned. What grabs you when you look at it? Curator: The whole image sings a baroque tune of deception! Don Quixote's yearning eyes, blind to the reality before him, capture the essence of human folly. See how Haussard’s lines dance between satire and empathy? The soft light bathing the figures—is it not the very light of delusion? Editor: Delusion, definitely! The women on the donkey almost look menacing, or at least gleefully mischievous, in their deception. Was this a common theme in art back then, this kind of mocking humor? Curator: Oh, absolutely! It’s theatre! The Baroque loved to poke fun at authority, social norms, and, most endearingly, at ourselves. Prints like this were readily reproduced, spreading social critique like gossip. And the landscape itself becomes complicit—a stage for the absurd drama. Do you notice how it feels almost…overly picturesque? Editor: Yes! Now that you mention it, it almost feels too perfect. A constructed, artificial backdrop to the scene. Almost dreamlike, if the dream was a little bit of a nightmare! Curator: Precisely! Perhaps this work serves as a mirror to our own tendencies to romanticize, to project, to get utterly lost in the windmills of our minds. Editor: So much more than just a funny scene. It’s got this melancholic note humming underneath. Thank you. Curator: Indeed, a chuckle with a lingering aftertaste. A reminder that perhaps, we are all a little bit of a Don Quixote!