If you were an artist today and you wanted to flex, you would make some visual illusion and post it on Instagram and TikTok. But what if you were a Dutch artist in the 17th century? How would flex your godly art skills and mog the no-talent plebs?

By making a Kunstkamer.

Like this one (Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures), made by Willem van Haecht in around 1620, which it shows art connoisseurs (cognoscenti) discussing and examining an art collection.

A Kunstkamer (cabinet of art or cabinet of curiosities) is a genre or style of artwork that got popularized in Antwerp (Belgium) and the Southern Netherlands between roughly 1600 and 1650. These things were truly technical masterpieces because the paintings would contain dozens of other tiny paintings. And they weren’t just random doodles. If you zoom in, you’ll see that many of the tiny paintings inside are miniature reproductions of real works by famous Renaissance and Baroque artists. The level of detail is extraordinary. You can literally see the brushwork within the tiny reproductions.

The kunstkamer paintings were often commissioned by very wealthy collectors and they were used to showcase their art collections and taste. Kind of like how I make lists on this website to showcase mine. You wandered through ideas by walking from painting to painting and would see how all the art on display was connected through artists, patrons, history. You could literally think of them as 17th century Tumblr walls. You would not only get to know the taste of the person who owned the collection but also understand them a little bit as a person.

You should google Flemish gallery paintings or kunstkamer paintings to find more works in this style.

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War recounted the history and the causes behind the war between Athens and Sparta.

Sparts was the regional hegemon of Greece while Athens was a rising nation, growing economically and militarily and eventually surpassed Sparta in terms of wealth, influence and power. This led to Sparta feeling concerned of the growth and influence of Athen’s and how it could challenge Spartan dominance. According to Thucydides, Spartan fear of Athens’ growing power was the fundamental cause of the war. A conflict born purely out of assumptions that could have been avoided had both parties just talked it out.

The term Thucydides Trap is used to describe the tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens of rivals to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon.

This is the trap that America and China are currently finding themselves in.

But the trap is a total self projection on the hegemon’s part. It is rooted in their own insecurity and bad faith. Because the hegemon itself came to power using warfare and illegitimate means, thus it believe that the rising power will do the same even if the rising power in question has no plans of doing that. This leads the hegemon to attack first, and eventually, losing to the rising power.

China will win. But at what cost?