Portret van Karel Lodewijk, keurvorst van de Palts 1656

Curator: Looking at this portrait, I immediately sense a certain weight, a somberness. It’s a stillness caught in time. Editor: And what a precise, painstaking way to capture that stillness! This is an engraving, made in 1656 by Wallerant Vaillant. It depicts Charles Louis, Elector Palatine. Curator: The fur trim! The elaborate curls! And that almost unsettlingly small crown he’s holding. What do you make of that choice, that miniaturization? Editor: It points, doesn't it, to the nature of power itself – something made, handled, even displayed. Vaillant clearly wants us to consider the material markers of sovereignty here. Engraving was fascinating because it allowed prints to be made in large quantities, thus allowing images of important figures to be disseminated more widely. Curator: Almost like a proto-photograph! Yet each line, each shadow is deliberate, hand-wrought. It feels so different from our digitally reproduced images today. Editor: Exactly. And look at the hatching, the layering of lines. It gives a tactile quality, especially in rendering textures of the fabrics, the hair. It really invites close study of its surface and process. We also shouldn’t ignore the caption beneath the image. It’s interesting what these kinds of texts tell us, who they are talking to, and what they seek to express with their choice of wording. Curator: It's strange to think this image of immense privilege was also mass-produced and somewhat democratic for the time. What’s your biggest takeaway after our viewing? Editor: For me, it is about the inherent tension in the creation of the print – how it speaks to issues of craft and labour while presenting an image of elite society. What about you? Curator: It’s made me think about the ephemeral nature of power and how we choose to portray it – in monumental oil paintings or more fragile, mass-produced prints. What lasts, and why?