Monument ter gelegenheid van de bruiloft van Jonas Witsen en Elisabet Basseliers 1701

Editor: This engraving by Jan Goeree from 1701, titled "Monument ter gelegenheid van de bruiloft van Jonas Witsen en Elisabet Basseliers," looks like a celebratory print of a sculpture, commemorating a wedding. I find it to be a fascinating fusion of sculpture and printmaking. The Baroque aesthetic, coupled with the "old engraving style," renders a mood that evokes a grand, almost theatrical sensibility. What are your thoughts? How does this elaborate design speak to you? Curator: This is marvelous. What leaps out at me isn't just the Baroque drama – those twisting figures and grand gestures—but the very ephemerality it attempts to defy. A wedding, a fleeting moment of joy, rendered in supposedly permanent bronze or marble and then captured again in the reproducible form of the engraving! It's like a double echo of a party. Consider all these layers: it isn't only the original monument created in honor of the wedding but also the intention of capturing it through print so that the significance outlives the moment. Doesn’t that make you wonder: what is it we’re actually trying to preserve with our art? Editor: That’s a brilliant take! I hadn’t considered the layered preservation aspect. I was so focused on the visual drama, I missed the conceptual depth. The tension between a unique sculpture and a widely available print – it is trying to defy the flow of time, isn't it? Curator: Precisely. The question isn’t just what we remember, but how and *why* we choose to remember. Are we trying to possess the moment or share it? This piece feels both grand and intimate. And, let's be honest, a bit over the top – quintessential Baroque! But there is this deeply human desire embedded within. Editor: Well, thank you. Now when I look at it, I see so much more. Curator: Indeed! This Baroque wedding is a looking glass into the ever-present, fundamental human impulse of remembering. It can teach us about not just this period in history, but ourselves.