Drie speervechters en een vaandeldrager 1620 - 1664

Curator: Here we have "Three Swordsmen and a Standard Bearer" by Stefano della Bella. It’s an etching, dating from the mid-17th century, part of the Rijksmuseum's collection. It depicts three figures engaged in a sword fight, observed by another carrying a standard. Editor: My immediate reaction is that this work is almost skeletal! It’s so spare, reduced to only essential lines. But then that standard—its weight practically tangible. Curator: Della Bella was fascinated by military life; he made many images of soldiers, parades and battles. This piece is interesting as it's not a grand scene of conflict, but rather a vignette, a slice of everyday martial culture. It almost feels staged, like a performance. Editor: You can almost smell the etching acid in that explanation! To my nose, the ‘performance’ reads more as ‘labor.’ Someone designed and maintained these expensive skills in swordsplay, someone printed the etching… the work reveals a lot of embedded social labor of both martial artistry and printmaking! Curator: Perhaps. I see a dance, a choreographed duel. It makes me think of courtly rituals, of the theatre. The figures are placed against this stark background; they’re almost like actors on an empty stage. Don't you think the whole image is remarkably economical? The flag's movement really enhances a sensation of a wind blowing from another world, somehow… Editor: I’m struck by the material conditions shaping its creation. Della Bella’s choice of etching made it cheap for circulation. Also, notice how simply drawn is the background itself? You could reproduce it almost anywhere and so, it allowed martial ideologies to be disseminated far more widely. Curator: I always wonder, what did Della Bella feel when he created this artwork. There's this odd mix of the detached, the decorative and some sense of underlying tension – as though the dance of blades might end any moment in some tragic way. Editor: Exactly! And with relatively cheap mass reproduction—here, it serves as almost a sort of manual on refined killing; how those kinds of power dynamics became so normalised! That´s the crux of my view here. Curator: This etching, born from ink and steel, really captures not only the aesthetics but also a social and personal history of that moment. Editor: Absolutely, these kinds of artworks expose a society through materials. So, you end up finding all kinds of stories encoded.