X-radiograph(s) of "Crippled Beggars" 

Curator: It's fascinating how stark this X-radiograph of "Crippled Beggars," after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, appears. The image reduces the familiar scene to its most essential elements. Editor: Yes, it's eerie. Stripped bare, the painting's materiality comes forward – the weave of the canvas, the density of the paint layers, like geological strata. Curator: Even in this ghostly form, the figures retain a symbolic potency. Bruegel’s beggars, historically marginalized, become almost spectral beings, their otherness amplified. Editor: I’m struck by the way the radiation reveals the artist's process, each brushstroke and correction now visible. It makes us think about the hand that crafted this image. Curator: It compels us to consider how layers of meaning and making converge. Editor: Absolutely, leaving me to consider the labor and the physical object itself.