Gedicht over de kunstbeoefening van Gesina ter Borch 1674 - 1679

This delicately rendered poem, inscribed around 1679 in Amsterdam by Anna Adriana Geerdinx, presents a fascinating study in form and function, with its brown ink gracefully adorning a rectangular page. The poem has an intimate, personal quality, reflecting both aesthetic and intellectual pursuits. The structured, ordered arrangement of calligraphic lines fills the page in a way that balances clarity and ornate beauty. I am interested in the way that the act of writing, which is both visual and textual, explores artmaking and its transformative power. The interplay between Geerdinx’s elegant handwriting and the poem’s focus on the arts, especially in the context of Gesina ter Borch, suggests that the artwork is a semiotic system, full of cultural codes and artistic intentions. These codes invite us to explore the interplay between text and visuality, language and representation. The poem thus functions as a site of continuous interpretation, where meaning isn't fixed but rather emerges from our active engagement with its formal qualities and historical context.