Prints depicting disasters were produced to create visible and explicit markers of memorable events. In this essay, a print with an allegory of a fire in Amsterdam’s Schouwburg theatre is used to investigate this particular function of disaster prints, first by looking closely at the iconography and then at the larger network of disasters that were used as points of reference after the fire. The print serves as a starting point for investigating the deeper impact of images in the longer term. The same format was adopted 35 years later, in a print depicting the explosion of a gunpowder ship in the heart of the city of Leiden. It seems that the allegory of the fire gave the artist the same possibilities of visualising communally felt feelings of loss. Furthermore, the print of the Leiden explosion was consciously designed to evoke memories of a fire in Amsterdam where its primary audience was located. These destructive disasters had an impact that transcended towns and regions, and prints referred back to disasters in the past to communicate impact of recent events. In the Leiden print, meant for an Amsterdam audience, the usual points of reference were complemented with an image of a local disaster, i.e. the Schouwburg fire, to underline and encourage interurban connections. This allusion to a carefully chosen disaster in the past helped evoke an appropriate response to a catastrophe in the present. This art historical study offers insight into the importance of images in disaster responses and demonstrates how disaster prints could stimulate interurban charity by evoking familiar pictures of local catastrophes.

中文翻译：

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舞台上的灾难：18 世纪晚期灾难版画中的城市间联系

描绘灾难的印刷品被制作出来，以创建令人难忘的事件的可见和明确的标记。在这篇文章中，一幅带有阿姆斯特丹 Schouwburg 剧院火灾寓言的版画被用来研究灾难版画的这种特殊功能，首先通过仔细观察图像，然后在之后用作参考点的更大的灾难网络。火。从长远来看，印刷品是研究图像更深层次影响的起点。35 年后，同样的格式被采用，印刷品描绘了莱顿市中心一艘火药船的爆炸。似乎火的寓言给了艺术家同样的可能性来形象化共同感受到的失落感。此外，莱顿爆炸的印刷品有意识地设计成唤起人们对其主要观众所在的阿姆斯特丹火灾的回忆。这些破坏性灾难的影响超越了城镇和地区，印刷品回顾了过去的灾难，以传达最近事件的影响。在为阿姆斯特丹观众设计的莱顿版画中，通常的参考点与当地灾难（即 Schouwburg 火灾）的图像相辅相成，以强调和鼓励城市间的联系。这种对过去精心挑选的灾难的暗示有助于唤起对当前灾难的适当反应。