Toernooi met Lodewijk XIV aan het ringsteken 1662

Curator: Israel Silvestre's "Toernooi met Lodewijk XIV aan het ringsteken," created in 1662 and held in the Rijksmuseum's collection, depicts a tournament featuring Louis XIV. What springs to mind when you first view it? Editor: It feels incredibly ordered, almost diagrammatic, like a meticulously planned ballet of horses and riders frozen in a moment of ceremonial display. But at the same time, all that order hints at the performance of power, you know? Curator: Exactly. Silvestre was a master of topographical representation and this pen and ink work, created with the assistance of a mechanical pen, showcases that talent while reflecting the cultural obsession with courtly life and public spectacle. We have the raw material of ink on paper becoming something representative of both royal extravagance and nascent bureaucratic process. Editor: It’s interesting to see how the event is literally framed—both by the architecture and by the fence in the foreground that feels more prominent. It speaks to the separation of the elite from the masses and that division itself feels very performative, doesn't it? Curator: Most certainly. Note how the engraver used techniques common for sketches back then, the 'sketchwork' gives it a sense of immediacy. Consider also the materials used – affordable, transportable, capable of mass production through printmaking. The event itself becomes commodified and widely disseminated, reinforcing royal power to a much broader audience. Editor: And to think, all that meticulous planning, all that expense, reduced to lines on a page, ready to be duplicated and consumed! There's something subtly melancholic about the transformation of something so dynamic into this still image, this carefully managed distribution of imagery and power. Curator: Indeed, a fascinating encapsulation of how art serves to both document and propagate the narratives of power. Editor: A memory distilled.