Plate 5: Vase or Ewer with a Double Frieze, the Top shows Men Wrestling a Bull, the Bottom contains a Mask and Two Griffins, from Antique Vases (Vasa a Polydoro Caravagino) 1605

Curator: Standing before us is a print created in 1605 by Aegidius Sadeler II, entitled "Plate 5: Vase or Ewer with a Double Frieze…" It resides here at The Met. My initial impression? Intricate! All those swirling lines…it feels like a dance frozen in metal, even though it's only ink on paper. Editor: Intricate indeed. Let's focus on what we’re actually seeing. This is an engraving reproducing an antique vase. Look at how Sadeler, and indeed Caravaggio before him, saw value in meticulously documenting craft. It begs the question of high and low art. Are we meant to admire the artistry of the original vase, or the engraver’s skill in recreating it? Or, more importantly, why do we make those distinctions? Curator: A beautiful, knotty question! The friezes! The top depicts men grappling with a bull – a classic scene of man versus nature. And below, a rather menacing mask flanked by griffins. There is a bestial tension radiating off of this print. Editor: That “tension” is rendered with specific tools. The lines are remarkably consistent, almost mechanically so. Consider the labor invested in achieving this precision, in service to a design intended, ironically, to be replicated en masse. Engravings were a crucial means of circulating visual information, influencing tastes and styles across Europe. This piece is about luxury, classical themes, and the mechanisms that perpetuate privilege. Curator: See, I gravitate towards the human element: the artist interpreting a scene. The weight, the sweat on the wrestlers’ brows, even if implied, fascinates me. You are drawn to how those very impressions spread among other artworks, right? We find each other again! Editor: Always a meeting place in process! Reflecting on this plate reminds me to interrogate not just what we see, but how it arrived before our eyes and who it's meant to reach. Curator: For me, it's about the vase continuing to live through Sadeler’s artistry—even in the transformation from three dimensions to two. The artistic essence jumps through time like that.