Fotoreproductie van het schilderij 'Germaansch offer-altaar' door Jan Willem van Borselen c. 1866 - 1871

This is a photographic reproduction by Binger & Chits of Jan Willem van Borselen's painting, 'Germanic sacrificial altar'. While we don’t have a firm date for this image, we might imagine that it was produced in the mid-19th century. At that time, archeology was becoming increasingly professionalized. The Germanic sacrificial altar depicted in this image would have been seen as a window into the distant past of the Netherlands. The image evokes the geography of the Netherlands. It also evokes a period before Christianity, which was a time idealized by some. One could contextualize the painting within the history of Dutch landscape painting and broader European Romanticism, particularly as the Romantics liked to depict the power of nature and idealized pre-Christian cultures. To fully understand this image, one might research the history of archeology and the reception of Germanic history in the Netherlands. Art is contingent on its social and institutional context.