Aurora met nachtdieren in de duisternis 17th century

Curator: Welcome! Before us is a striking 17th-century engraving titled "Aurora met nachtdieren in de duisternis," or "Aurora with nocturnal animals in the darkness," currently residing here at the Rijksmuseum. It's unsigned, attributed to an anonymous artist. What captures your eye first? Editor: It’s dramatic, bordering on chaotic. The dynamism is achieved through this incredible vortex of figures. It's predominantly grayscale, making the light sources feel incredibly potent, like slashes in the dark. Curator: Indeed, it’s quite a Baroque statement. Night creatures fill the dark skies, a stark contrast with the figures illuminated as dawn breaks, representing a clash of forces. There are allusions to knowledge being threatened by ignorance. The use of creatures usually relegated to darkness being included as figures shows that the symbols can be changed to better illustrate the story. Editor: It is visually clever. The artist employs line quality to achieve tonal variety, which in turn helps to communicate depth, particularly in the folds of the drapery. There's an attention to textural contrast with the wispy nature of the cloud with the density of those drapes. Curator: Symbolically, Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn, dispels the darkness, representing the triumph of reason over ignorance. Even the specific animals included probably weren't random—the owls, bats—creatures traditionally associated with blindness. Editor: Looking closely, I noticed that the artist manipulates the negative space quite carefully to construct that implied, asymmetrical frame around the central figures. That trapezoidal structure gives it all direction. Curator: That frame within a frame focuses the viewer’s gaze, no doubt. There’s such potent storytelling here, really representative of the period’s anxieties about enlightenment and obscurity. Editor: I find that structure quite intriguing, thank you for this symbolic reading, that offers even more food for thought about how a relatively simple engraving achieves all this in a subtle manner. Curator: Thank you. It just confirms how much cultural meaning could be packed into the visual vocabulary of the time.