Drie schapen en een steenblok met bas-reliëf 1648 - 1733

Editor: This print, "Drie schapen en een steenblok met bas-reliëf", dating sometime between 1648 and 1733, caught my eye. It’s by an anonymous artist and uses etching on paper to depict...well, sheep and a bas-relief! The contrast between the pastoral sheep and the classical-looking carving is strange. What do you make of it? Curator: Ah, it whispers of contradictions, doesn’t it? Juxtaposing the raw, untamed nature, embodied by those rather woolly sheep, against the ordered, classical bas-relief. Almost like a meditation on civilization versus the wild. Editor: I see that. The sheep seem so much more alive than the figures on the stone. Curator: Precisely! The sheep are textured, individual. The bas-relief, though likely depicting some grand mythological tale, is static, distant. Makes you wonder what the artist was trying to say. Maybe even taking a little jab at the artifice of grand narratives. Editor: A jab? You think they were being satirical? Curator: Satire, commentary… call it what you will! Look at the placement; the sheep are almost dismissing the stone. Like nature observing – and judging – our attempts at immortalizing ourselves. Though, maybe I'm just projecting my own modern cynicism onto this! What do you feel the bas-relief brings to the work? Editor: That's interesting...it makes the sheep almost like observers of art! For me, it really highlights how artificial art can be. I had just considered this piece a random landscape study. Curator: Precisely! And art, like this etching, gives new lenses and new dimensions! I see fresh perspective now too. Editor: Totally! I never would have seen so much tension in sheep and a stone slab otherwise! Thanks!