Portret van Anna Elisabeth Voet c. 1860 - 1865

This portrait of Anna Elisabeth Voet, captured by Wilhelm J. Grammann, presents a young woman adorned in the height of 19th-century fashion. The black choker around her neck, punctuated with a central ornament, speaks volumes of the era's aesthetic and social codes. This slender band finds its echoes in earlier times—recall the delicate torcs of Celtic royalty or the jeweled collars of Renaissance nobility. Over time, the choker has reappeared in various forms, from symbols of mourning to declarations of gothic fashion. Each iteration carries its own nuanced significance, yet the foundational gesture of encircling the neck remains, an emblem of constraint but also of adornment. Consider the emotional weight of this cyclical motif. The choker, seemingly innocuous, can evoke feelings of restriction or protection, resonating with our collective memories and subconscious understanding of adornment and control. In Voet's portrait, it serves as a subtle yet powerful marker of her status and the cultural tapestry of her time, and how these gestures have persisted and evolved over centuries.