Lijkstatie van Willem IV, 1752, plaat 10 1752

Curator: My first thought: starkness. The print presents a very regimented scene, doesn't it? Almost unsettlingly so. Editor: It does. It depicts the lying-in-state of Willem IV in 1752, made by Jan Punt, in a print combining etching and engraving. A solemn occasion rendered with an eye to precise detail. Look at the almost obsessive rendering of the guards' uniforms. Curator: Precisely. And the vast empty space around them emphasizes, I think, the sheer weight of dynastic expectation resting on such figures. Note the guard isolated at the extreme right of the print, bearing the full weight of the gaze. Symbolically heavy. Editor: It makes you consider the economic implications, too, of those meticulously etched uniforms, doesn't it? All that fine cloth, the labour that went into their creation...a testament to Dutch manufacturing. I'd say they probably signified authority better than military use, and look how well this transfers to the artist. Curator: An authority certainly bolstered through carefully controlled visual rhetoric. Consider, the rigid repetition of the guard, repeated, almost like a manufactured motif, the almost eerie detachment from their grief—perhaps this is about control more than mourning? Editor: Control of image, of narrative… Even the very act of reproducing this event via etching and engraving allows for mass consumption of a spectacle that few could witness firsthand. What about the paper used; sourced how and from where? Curator: All adding to layers of controlled spectacle, undeniably, yes. But it’s compelling, isn’t it, this marriage of realism and symbolic charge? It makes one think about collective identity, even now. Editor: Indeed. From materials and modes of production to the political spectacle captured within the image, it speaks volumes about that society and this moment. Curator: A compelling and useful reflection of the symbolic echoes. Editor: The weight of this spectacle is carried on the print, for viewing even now.