Portret van Johann Georg Schulthess 1798

Curator: The stern, almost severe, profile of Johann Georg Schulthess from this 1798 engraving… there's something melancholic, yet undeniably refined, about the whole piece. What catches your eye first? Editor: Definitely the printmaking, and thinking about its labor intensiveness; those crosshatched lines upon lines, slowly building shadow on a copper plate. He wears this hat—a signifier—likely marking status but made from fabric from somebody’s mill. Curator: Exactly. The artist, Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger, captures him in a classic neoclassical style, fitting for the era, almost… Apollonian, don't you think? All those careful engravings on paper lending such depth. Editor: True, we see the rise of industrial-scale paper production in this period—alongside an explosion of engraved portraiture! How many portraits of learned men were created in the late 18th century with similar materials? Curator: Infinite, perhaps. There is a real tension—an intellectual giant made from paper and ink, these most ubiquitous materials! It almost cheapens it, right? Is that reverence? I think not. Editor: I see less cheapening than a distribution network: portraits used to be exclusively for the aristocracy. Suddenly this preacher, philosopher, translator—it notes here that he’s translated philosophical Greek writings—becomes visible and reproducible. He’s consumed! Curator: But the solemnity Bollinger gives him! That piercing gaze…it cuts through the superficial and it really invites introspection, a moment of considered, contemplative silence... which I suppose, with all this mass printing, you’d need, otherwise there would be madness! Editor: Yes. This is what a modern celebrity looks like; what the marketplace permits or even fabricates… and then what that image is worth—not in artistic terms—but as symbolic capital, which, as they say, you can’t put a price on. Curator: Yes, quite. He represents something, whether it's inherent or assigned, matters less than the impact, perhaps. That legacy... made repeatable thanks to craft. Editor: A potent and reproducible symbol. Now I must run to that other room of porcelain teacups for further evidence of bourgeois social values and its intersection of design, craft, labor… and, indeed, art. Curator: (Laughs) And I suppose I should muse on this portrait a bit more and try to capture its ineffable qualities...its mysterious quietude!