Gedenkteken voor Isaac Scholten 1818 - 1820

This print, made by Walraad Nieuwhoff, depicts a memorial to Isaac Scholten, and is rich in symbolism that speaks across time. The central motif is, of course, the memorial itself, adorned with cherubs, a portrait of Scholten, and topped by an urn, a classical symbol of mourning. To the sides of the monument, we see allegorical figures of grief, and a child holding an emblem of a church. The hourglass nearby is a memento mori, a reminder of life's fleeting nature, an idea that stretches back to antiquity. This echoes in the figures of mourning women, a tradition dating back to ancient Greek funerary art, embodying the raw, unfiltered emotion of loss, a primal response deeply embedded in our collective psyche. The motif’s persistence reveals our enduring need to give form to grief. This image doesn’t merely depict mourning, it embodies the eternal, cyclical nature of human emotion, and how we find ways to express this through symbols.