Christ Healing the Leper 

Pieter de Jode the Elder made this drawing of 'Christ Healing the Leper' in pen and brown ink, likely in Antwerp, sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century. It’s a study for a print from a well-established workshop that produced images for a wide international market. Consider how this image creates meaning through established visual codes. The leper kneels, his crutch cast aside, as Christ, haloed, performs the miracle. De Jode underscores the Church's role as an intermediary of divine power and as a dispenser of charity. As an art historian, I’d want to know more about De Jode’s place within Antwerp's artistic community, a place where printmaking was a major industry. What was his relationship to the Catholic Church, the dominant institutional force in the region? How did his work support or challenge the social hierarchies of his time? Understanding this artwork means going beyond its surface to explore its historical, social, and institutional context. It requires archival research, comparative analysis, and a critical awareness of the social conditions that shaped its production and reception.