Visioen van de onreine dieren before 1646

Christoffel van Sichem II made this small woodcut print, ‘Vision of the Unclean Animals’, sometime before 1658. Look closely, and you can see the way the artist has worked with the grain of the wood, cutting away at the block to leave a raised image. The network of thin lines, almost like a dense weave, is what carries the picture. Because woodcuts are relatively simple to produce, they were a popular medium for disseminating images at this time. But despite the apparent simplicity of this print, the artist has packed a lot of information into this composition. The labor of the figures is emphasized, from the writing of the religious man, to the figures hauling the cloth above. These images of labor are contrasted with the vision itself, raising questions about the relationship between the earthly and the divine. Paying attention to the materials and making of this print allows us to understand how meaning is generated, and how images can be widely distributed.