Aarde c. 1615 - 1630

Curator: Oh, wow, this engraving feels like staring into a kaleidoscope that someone filled with baroque creatures and curlicues. Editor: You’ve hit on something. What we're looking at is “Aarde,” or “Earth,” an engraving probably dating from the period of 1615 to 1630 and now part of the Rijksmuseum’s collection. The artist responsible for it is Hans Janssen. It is a piece of tremendous period invention and ornamental design. Curator: Ornamental, yes! It’s intensely decorative. My eyes keep wanting to find a center, a point of focus, but then everything swirls away again. There are these little figures peeking out amongst all the frills and foliage. I find myself asking, Is this a map? An abstract map of earth? Editor: In a way, perhaps. Think about how, in the 17th century, these kinds of prints served as pattern books. Architects, artisans, all sorts of craftspeople used them as inspiration. "Aarde" is an opportunity to imagine, and reimagine the natural world in ways that feed directly into Europe's booming ornamental vocabularies. It visualizes a type of early ecological awareness in an ornate visual form, quite literally embedding human and natural figuration in patterns of continuous material culture. Curator: Ah, that gives it a whole new level of interest. So, it’s not just about beauty for beauty's sake, but about providing visual blueprints for a culture grappling with its relationship to the earth. Is that right? Editor: Exactly. What looks like pure fancy has a very grounded social purpose. By taking these ideas and forms into everyday life, prints like these influenced popular consciousness around land, resources, and humankind’s place within it all. Curator: And I'd venture to say there’s a beautiful paradox in that, isn’t there? A functional object, like an engraving intended for reproduction and dissemination, offering up a meditation on our planet and our connection to it. I almost feel like touching earth, just imagining earth here, even. Editor: Absolutely, this encounter might challenge some visitors' conventional understanding of historical visual formats and what social impact they can embody. It demonstrates the multi-faceted functionality of imagery.