Stadsplein met fontein 1562 - 1601

Curator: Let's take a look at "Stadsplein met fontein", or "City Square with Fountain", an engraving produced sometime between 1562 and 1601. It's currently held in the Rijksmuseum collection, crafted by either Johannes or Lucas van Doetechum. Editor: It has this wonderful sense of theatre about it, doesn't it? Stark black lines against a muted white page create a sort of stage. The fountain takes center, around which human drama unfolds. A real sense of the Renaissance, a new dawning. Curator: Exactly, and you see how the cityscape depicted wasn't merely representational. Engravings like these involved meticulous labor, cutting lines into metal plates, using acid to etch away material. There was a whole process of printmaking allowing distribution and, ultimately, creating accessibility. Editor: Printmaking as democracy in art! It's easy to romanticize but true—and what beautiful craft involved. Look at the fine hatching used to create the building details. It’s so detailed. The whole city, the figures near the fountain, everything feels animated somehow. It is not so much about perfect symmetry. More about telling a small visual story, in almost a comedic style. Curator: Right, prints served a multitude of functions from the dissemination of knowledge, offering visual records of places and social settings accessible to wider audiences. This one visualizes city planning and daily life which would appeal to patrons and citizens eager to keep abreast of architectural trends, while also serving political agendas and self-fashioning via carefully constructing particular urban environments to the viewer. Editor: So in our contemporary world, this print served much the same function as documentary photography. Who knew those water-carriers would one day be immortalized on paper? It's marvelous, a testament to fleeting, fragile moments in time made monumental. Curator: I couldn’t agree more, observing its impact through this material lens, we appreciate a great depth of meaning imbedded within such exquisite baroque and landscape engraving. Editor: Right! Makes you dream about getting completely and utterly lost inside these narrow winding streets. It’s perfect, just as it is.