Portret van August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue 1819

Curator: Ah, this portrait from 1819 depicts August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue, a figure captured in print by Johann Michael Siegfried Lowe. Quite an evocative piece. Editor: My first thought? Austerity. It feels so...controlled. All those fine, precise lines, you could slice cheese with them. It’s not exactly shouting ‘party time’. Curator: Indeed. The engraving medium lends itself to that crispness, almost a neoclassical ideal shining through. Consider the clean profile, the restrained detail. It reflects a desire for order, typical of its period, really. Kotzebue was a well known German dramatist, also. Editor: Right, a playwright. You'd expect a bit more drama then, wouldn't you? Perhaps Lowe was going for gravitas, emphasizing intellect over, say, flamboyant artistry. Instead it shows some stoic face. He almost looks like he knows his work wasn’t really all that. Curator: His reputation suffered a blow during his own time and afterwards as a figure who spoke in favor of conservatism during a time of revolutionary thought. And was rather notoriously assassinated because of it. Editor: No wonder, with a profile that serious! Poor bloke probably never cracked a smile. But you see, looking at it now, I find a kind of detached honesty. It's unflinching in its portrayal. I find it both disturbing and a little charming at the same time. Curator: That blend of emotions you're feeling likely speaks to the print's success, doesn't it? It has become an archive of socio-political attitudes and that sense of individual destiny—all etched on the copperplate and here as print. Editor: Exactly! We both are making sense of those impressions to which you opened my eyes in a way I would otherwise be blind to them. And as a friend put it once: "You never truly possess a feeling until you have turned it into an image.”