Églomisé
The popularity of landscape painting in the 17th century established it as a genre in its own right with categories such as the still life and genre scene. At the time of production this kunstkast featured paintings on all twelve drawers, the central door, and under the top cover--only two of the original twelve drawers have been replaced. Done in églomisé (an oil on glass technique that forces the painter to work in reverse), each painting is framed in the fashionable ripple moulding ebony style of the time with the addition of a band of tortoiseshell between mouldings. The paintings are credited to an artist who left his monogram on the bottom left corner of the central door. At the hand of “WVO” these églomisé paintings come to life, characterized by large outcrops of rock, low horizons, and well defined alternations of light and shadow. A clear flemish influence is present, however no artist matching the monogram has yet been discovered. There is a curious fascination with archways, both natural and man-made. Ruins scatter each of the scenes while smaller figures, known as staffage, populate the ground. Notions of decay and of the monumentality of the land are played with, while the “noble” ruins touch on a more profound meaning. According to scholar Walter S. Gibson, the difference between those ruins he deems as “rustic” is their lack of, “splendor, they are the remains of a people without history...they evoke, not past greatness, but present impoverishment, crop failures, the abandonment of cultivated land”. Thus, the “noble” ruins depicted in these paintings deliver a message not of waste and neglect, but something more akin to achievement and the slow, yet sure passage of time.