Marta leidt Maria Magdalena naar Christus 1520 - 1575

This undated print, housed here in the Rijksmuseum, depicts Martha leading Mary Magdalene to Christ. The scene is striking in its theatricality: Jesus sits on the steps of a temple, gesturing to a crowd that includes Mary Magdalene, brought by her sister Martha. The architecture suggests a desire to align the story with classical antiquity, an aspiration we often see in art made in the 16th and 17th centuries across Europe. What we need to ask is: what does that do to the story? We know that prints like these were often made for a growing class of literate laypeople, eager to interpret the stories of the bible for themselves, and to align the present with a grand past. Prints are also relatively cheap to make, and so can function as a form of political propaganda. As historians, it's our job to consider such elements of the print’s cultural context, its relation to religious and political institutions, and the means of its production and distribution, so we can better understand the artwork's role in the society that produced it.