Portret van Anna Maria van Schurman 1763 - 1804

Curator: What strikes me first is the stillness of the image, and the intensity in the subject's gaze. Editor: This is a portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman, engraved sometime between 1763 and 1804 by Carel Jacob de Huyser. What speaks to you of stillness? Curator: Well, look at the precision of the lines, the meticulous rendering. The image feels contained, almost hermetic, due in part to the frame-within-a-frame and tight, symmetrical composition. It gives off a certain…control. But it doesn’t quite mask a potent energy beneath. Who was Schurman? Editor: A remarkable figure! She was a 17th-century polymath – a philosopher, linguist, poet, and artist, exceptional for a woman of her time. To me, this portrait presents complex considerations of what it meant for women to engage with creative and intellectual labour. Curator: Exactly! How do you see that reflected materially? Editor: In some ways the materials say it all; the engraving suggests reproduction and accessibility but the work feels academic, literary. Consider the layers: her dress, the oval frame, the books, the cartouche bearing her name… the materiality almost illustrates Schurman's position at the threshold of visibility and agency, the labor it would have taken to arrive at this moment of inscription into history. Curator: So the artwork gives presence but also marks something that once was more difficult to achieve for women in academia? Editor: Precisely! Even her clothes look practical rather than decorative! How do the limitations placed on women influence access to the resources necessary to become figures celebrated enough to even have these images of them? Curator: And how are those boundaries, which were socio-cultural, now boundaries made from the materials of art history? It makes me question our ability to excavate the stories within. I can now no longer just passively receive this engraving! Editor: Indeed. The labor invested into these lines, cuts and marks, tells the tale of her struggles, achievements, and contributions in ways perhaps never intended, providing glimpses into how figures, specifically women, are shaped and made in their current form.