Christus en Johannes de Doper als kinderen 1616 - 1654

Peter Franchoys created this print of Christ and John the Baptist as children in seventeenth-century Antwerp. It presents the two future saints as chubby infants, playing together in a landscape, prefiguring their later roles. Franchoys worked in a period of Catholic revival and he specialized in religious subjects. The print employs common visual codes of the time: Christ is only identifiable by a faint halo. In accordance with Counter-Reformation ideals, this is an intimate, humanizing image of holy figures, very different from earlier depictions of a remote, divine Christ. Prints were essential to Antwerp's economy, and its artistic institutions such as the Guild of Saint Luke. This print probably circulated among private devotional collectors. To understand this image better, we need to consider the printmaking industry, the religious politics of Antwerp, and the institutions that shaped artistic production. This kind of research helps us to understand the social and cultural roles that art played in its own time.