Moeder met kind aan de borst terwijl ze granaatappels plukt voor haar kinderen 1763

Curator: Soothing isn’t it? There’s something idyllic in this image—the flowing lines, the natural imagery, the soft hatching, so soft—it’s almost dreamlike. Editor: Exactly! And this tranquility might spring from what we know of this image. What we’re looking at is a print made by Jean Daullé after a drawing by François Boucher, completed around 1763. It’s entitled “Mother with Child at the Breast While Picking Pomegranates for Her Children.” You can find it at the Rijksmuseum. Curator: The pomegranates of course, traditionally they’re symbols of abundance, fertility, even resurrection. Editor: It’s also interesting what it says about maternal selflessness: plucking fruit for her children even while one suckles. What I really see in the scene, though, is a world unto itself, complete with its own temporal logic, its own version of space, that is less “real” than reflective of internal relations and archetypes. Curator: Mmh, the very archetypal symbol of the Mother… but then aren't we are always filtering perception, translating phenomena through the lenses of previous experience and the symbolic order, imbuing things with culturally and psychologically accrued meaning? Editor: And, Daullé uses hatching to create the shading, layering line upon line to render form— look at that gorgeous tree on the left! —the woman’s robe is simple, but look at how the shading gathers and folds... It’s gorgeous. Curator: Right. And it’s an intimate scene, but in a way, detached and monumental—perhaps reflecting those notions of fertility, eternity, immortality, all wrapped into one potent, semiotic bundle we’ve come to know as ‘motherhood’ . Editor: Ultimately, Daullé and Boucher evoke that ideal here—motherhood and family life at its most calm and rewarding. Almost timeless. Curator: In a sense, they crystallize something about shared emotional life... What’s lovely about it is that, despite its calm demeanor, there's a sense of playfulness to the moment, and the image itself seems caught up in that emotion. Editor: It’s funny, the effect an image like this can have: almost transporting us to a safe, warm inner space where everything's beautiful and everyone gets along...