Portret van Hendrik Casimir I, graaf van Nassau-Dietz 1630 - 1699

Editor: We're looking at a portrait, "Portret van Hendrik Casimir I, graaf van Nassau-Dietz," placing it somewhere between 1630 and 1699. It's an engraving, and the subject has such a serious, almost melancholic air. What catches your eye when you look at this print? Curator: Oh, this piece sings to me of swirling questions around identity. He is Count Hendrik Casimir I, caught in a fixed representation. The intricate armour hints at power, duty, and yet the rendering, this almost meditative stippling, does it cage the spirit as much as it elevates the subject? And consider this isn’t *quite* a face to face encounter, but a *print*, so several times removed... What parts seem to catch the light, do you think? What emerges? Editor: I notice that even though it's an engraving, and quite detailed, the face feels soft, more human than the armor, which is so heavily textured. Maybe that's intentional? Curator: Absolutely, a tender face against a martial chest. But what is a portrait, after all, if not a little theatre? Does it give us ‘him’ or the image of a powerful ruler carefully constructed? Also consider this baroque obsession with swirling draperies of fabrics. But this artist really cuts all this drama down and almost gets to a kind of ‘ordinariness’… The question is then what does it mean for him as the real Henri to face off against *that* image again and again, out in the world? A tool in a kind of political chess, or an echo of his own longings and obsessions. Editor: That's a really interesting thought - the tension between the public image and the private self. It makes me think differently about portraits in general. Curator: Yes! An encounter with portraits is a collision of our private expectations and the political projections and assumptions behind the creation of that piece. Now, *what* an invitation that can become!