Dubbele deur met zes panelen before 1678

Franz Ertinger created this intricate engraving of a double door in the 17th century. It's an orchestration of classical motifs, where each element carries echoes of the past. Above the doorway, allegorical figures recline, flanking a heraldic shield—symbols of power, status, and perhaps familial legacy. But, it's the grotesque masks that intrigue me. These faces, half-human, half-beast, have roots stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome. They were employed as apotropaic devices, meant to ward off evil spirits. Consider how the grotesque mask appears in Renaissance art, not merely as a pagan relic, but as a symbol co-opted and reshaped. Here, the masks remind us of the porous boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the beautiful and the monstrous, reflecting our own inner struggles and fears. The cyclical return of these symbols demonstrates the eternal dance between chaos and order, fear and beauty, that shapes our collective psyche.