Executie van Ravaillac, 1610 1610 - 1612

Curator: Heavens, that's bleak. It feels like staring into the black heart of 17th-century justice. Brutal. Editor: Indeed. Before us, we have an engraving dating from 1610 to 1612, "Executie van Ravaillac," attributed to Frans Hogenberg. It currently resides in the Rijksmuseum. The texture suggests that the medium involves pen and ink. Note how it evokes that period’s anxieties so starkly. Curator: You can almost smell the sweat and fear wafting off it. Hogenberg’s lines aren’t just describing a scene; they're dissecting a moment of collective frenzy. Look at that poor soul being quartered—the composition is utterly unforgiving. Is there any kind of harmony within the image or are its many, individual, perfectly composed agonies its form of organizing the depicted brutality? Editor: Well, the formal qualities amplify the horror. The tightly packed figures, the architectural rigidity of the buildings—they all contribute to a sense of inescapable fate. Hogenberg's mastery lies in rendering the implicit violence of a highly structured society made visually literal. You note, for example, the high angle on which the architecture rests relative to the low angle that depicts the body's mutilation? Curator: But what about the intent? Is Hogenberg glorifying justice or, maybe, indicting such vicious displays? It's hard to tell if it's reverence or revulsion, isn't it? All those dark lines seem to swallow any empathy whole. What can be said of a moralizing impulse so gleefully illustrated? Editor: Hogenberg’s image prompts many unsettling reflections. Perhaps, the most terrifying is realizing the performance is so heavily policed by the watchful eyes in windows, who stand over such butchery. Curator: Gives one pause. To think of those past public executions. We consider them the way those long dead citizens consumed these horrible events... fascinating. Editor: Agreed, indeed an image that haunts the memory long after you've turned away.