Overwinningen op de Spanjaarden 1631

Curator: Ah, this medal, created by Aert Verbeeck around 1631, titled “Overwinningen op de Spanjaarden”—Victories Over the Spanish. Made of metal in relief, it’s quite the baroque beauty, isn’t it? Editor: Baroque indeed! I'm struck by how, even in such a small, unassuming form, it feels charged with the full weight of Dutch struggle. There’s something intensely personal about how these medals served to commemorate and disseminate political power during wartime. Curator: Yes, the medal almost whispers stories. It is almost pocket-sized drama in silver. The details—look at the meticulous curls in his hair and the lion fiercely posed against, is it a broken cannon? Someone's clearly trying to show you something heroic. Editor: Exactly. It’s a perfect marriage of personal identity and political narrative. The lion trampling the broken cannon…such explicit symbolism. It highlights a rhetoric of triumph and domination deeply entangled with national identity. And look how that narrative omits any Spanish perspective! It renders the colonizer wholly absent from the Dutch struggle. Curator: An act of artistic forgetting perhaps? Or just solid PR? One thing that's nice is how the lettering frames each face—there is no real background to distract from the image. Also, notice the portrait—I am going to assume that the man in the medal is the man in charge. He is trying very hard to look calm and determined! It gives an immediate insight to the mood of the Dutch court in 1631, even. Editor: I love your point about the deliberate framing. And yes, these objects broadcast controlled narratives, which is also fascinating because it points to their limitations. They reveal a lot about those commissioning them but so little about, for instance, the violence perpetrated during these supposed "victories". Curator: Precisely! What this piece shows, both visually and politically, tells a multifaceted narrative about culture at that point in time, which can bring to light the past’s perspective—and provide some lessons, in today's times. Editor: Yes! It gives us tools to excavate those messy complexities, encouraging a critical engagement with historical representations of power.