Wellust 1550 - 1625

Curator: Pieter Jalhea Furnius created this engraving, "Wellust," sometime between 1550 and 1625. It's currently part of the Rijksmuseum's collection. The immediate impression I get is...claustrophobia! Editor: Really? I find it almost playfully unsettling. The figures are so deliberately posed. Look at the textures! That dense drapery and the contrast with the smoothness of the human form is… intentional. But then there is a weird looking bull to the side. Curator: It’s like he is a sentinel or observer. A Minotaur maybe. It almost feels like Furnius is setting a scene for moralizing on temptation. Is it about desire and the animal nature we’re supposed to control? That still life—the fruit and the carafe— it evokes excess. And even a false sense of stability as we are lured off the right path. The figures being intertwined, their limbs creating an intricate but slightly awkward arrangement. Editor: I can see that. And the Latin inscription reinforces the idea: 'Luxuries praeludite malum, que dedit ea semper; Corporis arbitrijs hebetat caligine sensus.' "Lust is a prelude to evil and always gives it; it dulls the senses with the darkness of physical judgment." Curator: Exactly. And even though the landscape appears serene, this print teems with symbols of sensory excess and obscured judgment. The bull also speaks to me of brute force. It feels almost an intrusion into a space that should belong solely to contemplation or tenderness. It reminds me, somehow, of those pre-psychological concepts where external animal presence equals human inner torment, which could even lead to enlightenment by seeing oneself with radical and unsettling honesty. Editor: I love the visual metaphor there; lust as both darkness and animalism. Makes me think of Jungian shadows. We repress those aspects of ourselves and risk being ruled by them. The artwork presents lust, like the image in the back almost looks like some sort of danger in the far distance. It is not so easily escaped once the physical urge overcomes all other judgement. Curator: Absolutely. It all just adds to a deliciously layered narrative about the dangers of giving in. It would be easy, I suppose, to walk on by and dismiss the engraving. It has got that sort of antiquated feel to it, with so much dense imagery and details but… Editor: But the composition creates a sense of dramatic unease that still resonates powerfully today. Like the weight of unspoken desires given shape and form. A cautionary tale.