Zeelandschap met Thetis en Neptunus c. 1700

Editor: Janssens' engraving, *Zeelandschap met Thetis en Neptunus* from around 1700, really throws me back to studying mythology. It's cool how it mashes up a mythological scene with a seascape! How would you approach interpreting it? Curator: Well, let's think about the cultural context. Seventeenth-century art frequently served a didactic function; images carried messages, often about power, authority, and the social order. This isn't just decoration. Knowing this was an engraving, do you have an initial sense for the public who would have viewed this artwork? Editor: Maybe affluent people who’d hang this in their house? Curator: Consider that prints allowed images to circulate more widely, potentially influencing the burgeoning merchant class's view of maritime power. The subject matter would then elevate the patron, making the merchant class part of the heroic past. Janssens is situating them inside of that history. Look at the landscape itself and see if the image can communicate something else? Editor: Mmh… maybe the chaos of the sea shows how important is it to dominate that environment. The Gods controlling the waters... Curator: Precisely! It's visually celebrating Dutch maritime power and potentially projecting a vision of imperial ambitions on a mythological frame. But tell me, does depicting mythology rather than literal contemporary events sanitize it, in any way? Editor: That makes sense. Mythology turns history into a…well, legend? But then also you give it less…responsability, since its only fictional? I think I’m starting to understand how these things get shaped and the images are presented! Curator: Indeed. And in thinking this way, we better understand the multiple ways these images may act in a historical context!