Don Quichot en Sancho Panza op een van hun tochten 1732 - 1733

Bernard Picart created this print of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza during one of their adventures in the 18th-century Netherlands. The image captures a scene from Miguel de Cervantes' novel, where Don Quixote, the delusional nobleman, mistakes a barber's basin for a helmet. Through the conventions of visual storytelling at the time, Picart presents a world where imagination clashes with reality, and the old aristocratic order is mocked in the face of emerging bourgeois values. The print medium itself played a crucial role in disseminating these ideas, making art more accessible and engaging with a wider audience than ever before. To truly understand Picart's work, we might consult texts about the rise of the print market and the changing relationship between artists and their public. Such research reveals how art both reflects and shapes the social landscape. The meaning of art is always contingent on its historical and institutional context.