Fotoreproductie van een prent door B. Desnoyers van de Madona de Casa Tempi door Rafaël before 1869

This is a photogravure by Joseph Cundall of B. Desnoyers' print of Raphael’s “Madonna della Casa Tempi." The image depicts Mary holding the Christ child, their faces close in an intimate, tender moment. Raphael, a master of the High Renaissance, lived during a time of immense cultural and religious change. His artistic focus was on capturing classical ideals of beauty, harmony, and balance, often in the service of the Catholic Church. In contrast to the Renaissance ideal, this photogravure was made in the mid-19th century when there was an increased interest in making art accessible to wider audiences through reproductive technologies. The creation and circulation of these kinds of images also supported the prevailing societal norms around motherhood. We see a gentle, nurturing mother, but there is nothing here about the complexity, or indeed the challenges, of womanhood. Ultimately, the artwork prompts us to consider how we continually reproduce and re-present classical images, and what this means for our contemporary values.