Grafteken van Isaac Sweerts door Rombout Verhulst in de Oude Kerk te Amsterdam 1911

This photograph captures Rombout Verhulst’s gravestone for Isaac Sweerts in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. The sepia tone of the photograph mutes the carving, softening all the edges and making the details less clear. This feels right for a memorial, like looking at something through a veil of time and memory. The stone is crowded with figures and shapes – putti, swags, shields, drapes, and of course the bust of Sweerts himself, all competing for our attention. But there’s also a tension between surface and depth, between the flat plane of the stone and the illusion of three-dimensional space. It's in the details – look at how the folds of the fabric seem to ripple and flow, yet they're frozen in stone. Or the way the faces of the putti are both realistic and stylized. Verhulst was a contemporary of Bernini, and you can definitely see the influence of the Baroque in the drama and theatricality of the piece. But there’s also something distinctly Dutch about it – a kind of down-to-earth practicality that keeps it from becoming too grandiose. Like the work of Frans Hals, Verhulst finds a way to bring life and energy to even the most formal of subjects.