Self-portrait (?) with plumed cap and lowered sabre 1805 - 1844

Editor: This is "Self-portrait (?) with plumed cap and lowered sabre," an engraving by Ignace-Joseph de Claussin, sometime between 1805 and 1844. The subject has this… intense gaze, but it also feels kind of theatrical. What do you make of it? Curator: Ah, yes. The plume, the sabre, the *drama*! It's tempting to see swagger, but I find something more vulnerable here, almost a searching. You know, engravings allow for such intimacy with line, and I'm always struck by how much of Claussin's apparent intensity is simply skillful suggestion. What does the face tell you? Editor: I see what you mean about vulnerability. There's a sadness, maybe? And the frame, the way it's etched, looks incomplete. Curator: Precisely! It adds to the sense of the unfinished, a moment caught in time rather than a definitive statement. It could even be hinting at the fleeting nature of identity itself, don't you think? As an engraver reproducing another’s work, maybe Claussin is wondering, who am *I*? What endures? What disappears? Editor: I never would have considered that! Seeing it as questioning his own role as an artist, instead of just a copy… It's making me rethink what a "self-portrait" even means. Curator: Yes! And consider: maybe all art is a form of self-portraiture. Everything we make, is shaped by our fears, hopes, our very humanity. What have *we* just created together, in our looking at it? Editor: That's pretty deep! Now I need to go stare at all the portraits and wonder what the artists are secretly saying about themselves.