Beleg van Geldern, 1703 1703

This is an anonymous print titled 'Siege of Geldern, 1703', and it presents a meticulously detailed rendering of a military campaign. The composition of the print is structured through various visual elements, such as line, shape and form. Note the lines that trace fortifications and battle lines, and the shapes of the city and encampments. These elements transform the chaos of war into a highly ordered, almost geometric design. There is a disjunction between the supposed subject of the artwork, which is a conflict, and the style, which is cool and calculated. Indeed, this intersection of conflict and order functions as a form of visual rhetoric. Here, space is not just represented; it is constructed. This interplay between representation and construction questions the presumed neutrality of cartography, suggesting that maps are never simply objective records but also tools of power, used to order the world.