Landschap met herders aan de rand van een dorp 1613 - 1695

Curator: Welcome. Here we have Nicolas Perelle’s, "Landschap met herders aan de rand van een dorp," dating from 1613 to 1695. It’s an engraving. Editor: My first thought is that it has a surprisingly peaceful air to it. For an engraving, there's a lot of... air. And look at the round shape; it feels like a secret window onto another world. Curator: Absolutely. As a print, the work relies heavily on line and tone to build depth and atmosphere. Consider how the dense cross-hatching defines the foliage compared to the distant mountains and how it evokes a sense of boundless space beyond the immediate pastoral scene. Editor: You know, examining the architecture in the village—or what we can see of it—interests me the most. How are buildings constructed? Who lives there? From this engraving, we might imagine lives lived by land-based working folk. You can even see the smoke billowing from a chimney. It is a material reality, rendered with these delicate, engraved lines. Curator: Yes, the architecture offers a fascinating contrast. Notice how Perelle plays with perspective. There’s this foreground activity, these herders, then the village as a symbol of societal structure in the background. It almost speaks to a longing, perhaps even romanticizes rural simplicity in contrast to urban complexities. Editor: Do we know the conditions in which the working people in the scene labored, what rights they had, or if the realities they faced were the ones this Baroque engraving projects? I like the art's optimism but find it naive in overlooking the struggles. Curator: It’s this tension, I think, that keeps the print compelling. We’re invited to luxuriate in the picturesque while being implicitly asked to consider the wider societal backdrop. Perhaps it is a prompt, in the guise of an idyll, to wonder. Editor: I agree. Maybe looking at engravings from the era can do both at the same time. Now, thinking about Perelle’s process and about the conditions of work when this was engraved helps contextualize some of the contradictions in the work for me.