Cornelia leest een boek 1827

Curator: This is an engraving from 1827, “Cornelia leest een boek,” or "Cornelia Reading a Book", by Elisabeth Barbara Schmetterling. It's got this incredibly delicate, old engraving style to it. What catches your eye first? Editor: It feels…contained. Like a cameo or a pressed flower. The oval frames her, and that collar almost cages her face. There's a stillness there. I wonder what she's reading and whether the book might hold some secrets she relates to? Curator: Secrets, maybe, or simply an escape? Given the time period, accessing books might have felt like opening doors to worlds that were otherwise closed off. Schmetterling, as a woman artist, would have been acutely aware of such restrictions and access. Editor: Precisely! And think about the performance of femininity in that era. Cornelia’s quiet act of reading subverts that expectation of a demure woman through the cultivation of an inner life of self-determined contemplation. Do you see her expression? She's not gazing out, inviting a male gaze; she's looking down at the page. Curator: I love that shift of focus. It feels almost rebellious, doesn't it? Especially because we are peering in on her private moment of learning and leisure. It's rendered with such delicacy too—the light pencil work, almost like whispers on the page, and she is completely enveloped in her reading material. Editor: And while the style—this Neoclassical formality—seems almost austere at first glance, the very fact that she’s depicted *reading* challenges the superficiality so often imposed on women. Literature becomes a tool, a weapon. Curator: That's so astute. You've made me see it differently now. Perhaps that's why she is forever enshrined in this oval frame. Editor: To me, Elisabeth Barbara Schmetterling offers not just a portrait, but a subtle manifesto about women, knowledge and power. Curator: It truly makes one contemplate that stillness and realize just how potent it can be. Thanks for that insight!