Maria met het Christuskind 1655 - 1690

This is an anonymous print, titled Maria met het Christuskind, in the collection of the Rijksmuseum. Images of Mary and the infant Christ served many purposes in their time. On the one hand they acted as devotional images, encouraging piety in a deeply religious society. But they also gave visual form to contemporary ideas about motherhood, childhood, and the family. This print gives us an insight into the visual culture of the Dutch Republic, where it was likely produced. The Dutch Republic was a Protestant country in which Catholic imagery had been officially banned. However, it continued to circulate in domestic settings. It reminds us of the power of images to convey and preserve beliefs and cultural values, even when those beliefs are not officially sanctioned. By studying prints such as this, and by looking into the records of the institutions that preserved and collected them, historians can reconstruct the social and political forces that shaped artistic production. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.