Gezicht te Rome 1628 - 1652

Editor: This is Jan Both's "Gezicht te Rome," created between 1628 and 1652. It's a watercolor and pen drawing currently held at the Rijksmuseum. It looks like a study of Roman ruins. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see layers of memory embedded in the very stones. The architecture speaks volumes. This arch, likely a triumphal arch, suggests power and conquest. But note the ruins: nature reclaiming what was once meticulously ordered. It presents an allegory of time and the impermanence of human ambition. What feelings does that juxtaposition evoke in you? Editor: It's quite melancholic, the way the plants grow over the stonework. But it also feels peaceful. Do you think the figures are significant, like stand-ins for modern people enjoying the relics? Curator: Perhaps. They provide scale, but I think they’re more than that. Their small size emphasizes the grandeur and age of the arch, hinting at humanity's relatively short existence against the backdrop of history. The light too. Notice how Both uses watercolor to bathe everything in a golden glow, which softens the harshness of the ruins. It could also speak of an idealized, perhaps lost, past. Editor: So, even the light has symbolic meaning! It makes me think about how we project our own longings onto these historical sites. It becomes a stage for us. Curator: Precisely! And this "stage" then gets internalized into how cultures create a common visual language for representing power. In a lot of ways, history gets 'remade' every time somebody looks at an image like this, to varying degrees. Editor: That's fascinating, and I like that thought; an image can become something else in the mind. Thank you, that really changes my view of the artwork.