Illustratie voor 'Den Arbeid van Mars' van Allain Manesson Mallet 1672

Curator: Looking at this fascinating print, made with engraving, is a page taken from Allain Manesson Mallet's 'Den Arbeid van Mars,' illustrated by Romeyn de Hooghe, dating back to 1672. Editor: Okay, wow, my initial impression is... intensely geometrical. It’s like a blueprint met a pastoral scene and had a very precise, very linear baby. Is it meant to be unsettling? Curator: In the context of the 17th century, the "Arbeid van Mars" speaks to the relationship between warfare and knowledge. It explores how mathematical precision serves martial ambitions, connecting theoretical diagrams to their practical applications in siege warfare. It asks us to examine militarism’s impact across societies, using intersectional views about identity, nation, and power, so we see the geometries as an ordering of destruction itself. Editor: Huh, I dig that subversive edge. The top half is nothing *but* diagrams - stark and rational, really kind of cold. Then, you glance down and see this idyllic, almost classical little landscape vignette happening beneath. The whole print has such a specific baroque intensity—line work as meticulously cruel as the angles it’s mapping out. Curator: Precisely. The detailed figuration down below sets the diagrams in a wider narrative, highlighting both the tools of destruction and those who carry out and suffer from it. Think of how this imagery impacts gender: are men the primary drivers of violence while rendering women subject to this social impact? What position does history put ordinary citizens into? Editor: Okay, yeah, now the figures on horseback even look a little… ominous. All the rational structures above leading directly to conquest and impact. I mean it's like De Hooghe stuck two very different feelings together using very sharp edges. Curator: Absolutely, it makes us ask critical questions about whose perspectives are centralized in military discourse. Editor: It’s really something how an artwork so rooted in technical drawing can actually feel so, visceral, know what I mean? Thanks to that gorgeous little landscape… suddenly there is a story behind all this data and numbers. And Romeyn, man, that detail with his line work makes it zing with clarity, no question! Curator: Ultimately, 'Den Arbeid van Mars' challenges us to consider whose stories are centered and erased, and encourages critical reflection upon the intersectional systems embedded within practices that we sometimes assume neutral and natural.