Illustratie voor 'Den Arbeid van Mars' van Allain Manesson Mallet 1672

Curator: This is an illustration by Romeyn de Hooghe, created around 1672. It’s actually an engraving, serving as an illustration for 'Den Arbeid van Mars' by Allain Manesson Mallet, part of a larger treatise on military engineering. Editor: Oh, it's got a very "map-meets-military-tableau" vibe. The rider on horseback, the camp scene… and what is that diagram up top? It feels surprisingly… dry for the era. Almost clinical. Curator: Precisely. The top section displays a cross-section, illustrating a trench or fortification. It shows the dimensions, crucial for planning sieges. What’s remarkable is de Hooghe merging the practical diagrams with vivid figuration below. It merges labor and planning, skill and brute force. Editor: Ah, so the cool precision up top literally maps onto the… less-cool realities below? I can feel that tension, actually. There’s this sense of calculated control overlooking a rather messy and perhaps romanticized military setting. The horse and rider seem rather nobly posed… as if about to ride to an equally idealized war scene. Curator: You're pinpointing de Hooghe's skillful deployment of artistic conventions, I think. These are essentially propagandistic devices, aimed to ennoble military planning and warfare. But let’s think about the physical creation of the print itself. De Hooghe was a skilled engraver; he had to painstakingly transfer this image onto a copper plate. Editor: The material aspect is a kind of labor that overlays the other… How meta! Thinking about him bending over a plate, I see even more contrast. Like, the guys on the ground are dirty; but, Hooghe has the clean transfer to worry about… The scale, too! That tent is like a tiny puppet-theater… so distant from real suffering. I am just lost for a few moments on how distant all of this has become… Curator: And this tension mirrors something that continues now; The distance the process creates for planners removed from consequences. We are simply left viewing something from long long ago in which a few choices created lasting ripples, much like ripples that the materials also created with production of a single print. Editor: Indeed… And that it also carries its past into our now, through institutions that it finds its preservation at, in ways no one may have originally guessed… very thought-provoking, ultimately!