Vertrek van koningin Henrietta Maria vanuit Scheveningen naar Engeland, 1643 1643

Curator: The level of detail is astonishing. "Departure of Queen Henrietta Maria from Scheveningen to England, 1643" rendered in meticulous engraving by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode. Look at the hustle and bustle, all etched on this print! Editor: You're right. There's a nervous energy in this little piece, it feels… charged. Almost like a news photograph. It’s incredible the detail van Berckenrode managed to capture. The ships practically shimmer! It feels, in some ways, not just like an image, but almost a document. Curator: And a poignant one, no? Queen Henrietta Maria fleeing to England in the midst of… well, amidst troubles. I imagine it must have felt dramatic in a moment of fraught history. Think about the psychological impact for her. Editor: Oh, absolutely! The ships almost form a sort of barricade, as if guarding her escape. There's something mournful about the sky. Those puffs of smoke look a bit like specters…like unseen grief rising. Curator: Symbolically charged then, with an echo of sadness hanging over the scene, yes. Remember this print shows the city with the sea. Cityscapes and seascapes. Editor: The symmetry is really striking, the way the town and the sea balance each other, and that swirling smoke pulls you up, like the engraving has become momentarily three-dimensional. The engraving becomes an opening. Curator: An opening, you say, and one towards an understanding of the anxieties around nation, monarchy, and… gender? It must have been unsettling. Editor: Undoubtedly. Consider the engraving as a piece of Baroque storytelling—drama amplified with meticulously placed figures, drawing the eye directly towards that symbolic escape, each vessel pushing away. Curator: It feels appropriate too, that it now lives here at the Rijksmuseum, with the ghosts of its narrative and visual history somehow perfectly at home. Editor: Absolutely, and the symbols…the endless visual data and potential insights, make you just stop to linger, think, feel and interpret the visuality…as you say the visual historical narrative itself, perhaps.