View of the port Zwolle 

Cornelis Pronk rendered this drawing of the port of Zwolle with pen and brown ink. Our attention is drawn to the playful dance between a man and a goat in the foreground, a seemingly light-hearted scene, yet such images of goats carry profound cultural weight. Since ancient times, goats have been laden with symbolic meaning, often associated with vitality, but also with untamed, chaotic forces. We see echoes of this duality in various cultural contexts, from the goat-like Pan of Greek mythology, embodying primal instincts, to the Christian association of goats with the unruly and the damned, separated from the sheep in the final judgment. The image of the man playfully wrestling the goat evokes a tension between control and chaos, echoing humanity's ongoing struggle to harness the wild within. What is this struggle, but the same tension that we find represented in the labours of Hercules or the trials of Samson? Thus, Pronk subtly engages the viewer in a reflection upon primal instincts, societal order, and the enduring human drama of controlling the animalistic self, recurring time and time again.