Zomer 1563

Philips Galle created this engraving entitled Zomer, meaning Summer in Dutch, sometime in the late 16th century. Galle was a printmaker in Antwerp, at a time when the city was a center of commerce and culture. Summer is personified as a muscular, nude man holding wheat. It’s an allegorical representation linking the male body to ideas of fertility, labor, and abundance. Meanwhile, in the background, we see laborers harvesting crops, a scene of agrarian life idealized through the print medium. The bareness of the labourers might evoke the vulnerability of the working class who depend on a successful harvest. The image subtly reinforces societal hierarchies, with the working class performing manual labor in contrast to the heroic figure who embodies the season. Galle’s Summer invites reflection on the labor, gender, and class dynamics that shape our relationship to the land and its resources.