Verlovingsfeest 1661 - 1726

Curator: Ah, a bustling scene! I am immediately struck by how the artist has captured a moment overflowing with shared experience. Editor: Yes, "Verlovingsfeest", or "Engagement Party," an engraving and etching of an anonymous origin dated somewhere between 1661 and 1726. The setting seems domestic, rendered in intricate detail using line work to give both shape and form. It’s currently held in the Rijksmuseum collection. The printing is interesting: the inscription seems integrated as part of the material and composition. Curator: It’s such a slice of life! I'm especially drawn to the interplay between the central couple’s interaction with those serving food to the guests. And, yes, you are so right to point out how the material here almost disappears to serve the grander, narrative intention. One gets lost dreaming about this anonymous world of intimate gestures of gathering. It invites a narrative. Editor: The inscription also mentions some names that give you hints. And while it does so, for me it only creates some curious problems of production. Was this artwork a special, made-to-order kind of product or a reproduced piece ready for mass circulation? The attention to fine detail feels at odds with a mass-produced model of reproduction. Curator: A mass-produced model? Heavens, no! Surely, these minute gradations of light and dark, they almost breathe! They suggest to me something more precious. There is something that smacks almost of the bespoke in this narrative, that opens to a realm of wonder and dream for the commissioner as much as for us. Editor: Interesting... to my eyes the labor of reproductive printmaking in itself offers the "wonder and dream," since in principle each impression will carry its variations while participating in the economies of display and consumption. Maybe a more standardized and efficient model than what we expect, in contrast to romantic readings of the work itself? Curator: Perhaps, and you are right to make note that no artwork escapes its own materiality, but this feels very personal to me somehow. Editor: Fair enough! Let’s meet here to discuss it next week!