Oude man en een vrouw lezen verboden lectuur 1876 - 1890

This etching by Jean Baptiste Pierre Michiels depicts an intimate scene of an old man and a woman engrossed in forbidden reading, surrounded by towering stacks of books. The act of reading, in itself, becomes a potent symbol—a key to knowledge and, potentially, dissent. Consider the figure of the old man, hunched over the text. His gesture, so similar to depictions of scribes and scholars throughout the ages, echoes in the works of antiquity and the Renaissance. The woman, resting her hand on his shoulder, creates a powerful connection between generations and the transmission of ideas. This transfer, from old to young, master to pupil, echoes the passing of forbidden knowledge through time. The visual presence of books acts almost as a character in itself. Books have been both revered and feared, representing enlightenment but also seen as harbingers of dangerous ideas. This dichotomy embodies the complex relationship between knowledge, power, and societal control, resonating throughout history in an ongoing, cyclical progression.