Bok zittend bij omgevallen boom c. 1657 - 1761

Editor: So, we're looking at "Bok zittend bij omgevallen boom" - that's "Goat sitting by a fallen tree," around 1657-1761, an etching by Marcus de Bye here at the Rijksmuseum. It's this incredibly detailed image of a goat looking very majestic amidst a pastoral setting. It feels strangely…melancholic, actually. What do you make of it? Curator: Melancholy…I like that! You know, to me, it whispers of a forgotten fable, doesn’t it? Like Aesop decided to dabble in existentialism. Look at the goat, enthroned on this little rise; utterly unbothered. Perhaps it's a quiet meditation on the fleeting nature of power - the fallen tree representing a king or empire brought low by time. Or maybe I'm just projecting my own Tuesday afternoon onto a seventeenth-century etching. What do *you* see in that landscape? Does it offer any clues? Editor: The landscape...it feels both detailed and sparse. Like there’s a whole world hinted at, but it's all simplified, distant. And the etching style…it makes everything look older, more…I don't know, symbolic? Curator: Exactly! Think about the Baroque period, its love of dramatic contrast, its fascination with the ephemeral. De Bye uses the etching technique beautifully – those fine lines, almost like whispers on the page – to evoke this sense of transience. Is the goat contemplating the fallen tree, or the future that awaits *him*? Is he king of his own little existential kingdom? It’s all so delightfully ambiguous! Editor: So, it’s less a straightforward landscape and more like… a stage for contemplation. A kind of philosophical theater with a goat as the lead? Curator: Precisely! And sometimes, dear student, a goat is so much more than *just* a goat. Editor: This has completely changed how I see it. It’s like the artwork woke up from a nap. Curator: Absolutely. And that’s the magic, isn’t it? Each time we look, it tells us a new story.