Gezicht op Londen tijdens de grote brand, 1666 1666

Curator: Look at the scale of devastation in this engraving! The billowing smoke, consuming the cityscape… it’s really quite powerful. Editor: It certainly evokes a sense of drama. We're looking at Pieter Hendricksz. Schut’s, "View of London during the Great Fire, 1666,” currently held in the Rijksmuseum. The event is now understood as pivotal moment, influencing not only urban planning but also insurance practices. Curator: Let’s not forget, it’s an engraving, a print. Think about the labor involved in creating these images—the skilled artisan carefully cutting the design into the metal plate, each line, each plume of smoke painstakingly rendered for mass reproduction and consumption. It's not just high art, it's a produced commodity that’s meant to quickly spread news and a lesson. Editor: Absolutely. And that distribution shapes the historical narrative, right? Prints like these were vital in forming public opinion, influencing rebuilding efforts and future fire prevention policies. Did these mass produced scenes shape our collective memory of that time? Curator: That’s it exactly. I'm also drawn to the foreground; it has folks at leisure, some with livestock. Is it just me, or does this choice highlight the disparity in resources between people impacted by the blaze? Or am I meant to view it as ordinary folks finding normalcy amidst the catastrophe? The material realities of some continued undisturbed even during times of crisis. Editor: It’s compelling to consider the intended audience too, what did different social groups derive from viewing such an image. It also strikes me as odd, the label says 'London' as though any contemporary viewer might not fully grasp what that meant in terms of geopolitical and commercial power. Was this primarily intended for a foreign market? Curator: Another thing that occurs to me is that the print flattens space. This is, for me, is really just raw material transformed into image. Editor: A devastating scene, immortalized through meticulous labor and careful deployment into the marketplace of images. Curator: Definitely reshapes our sense of time.