Fotoreproductie van De burgers van Antwerpen brengen de monstrans en de gewijde vaten die ze verstopt hadden voor Tanchelm naar de heilige Norbertus van Magdeburg door Cornelis de Vos before 1861

Edmond Fierlants created this photogravure of Cornelis de Vos' painting sometime in the mid-19th century. It depicts a 12th-century scene of the citizens of Antwerp returning sacred objects to Saint Norbert of Magdeburg. The original painting would have carried significant cultural weight, referencing a specific religious and civic history for the people of Antwerp. Fierlants' photogravure participates in a longer tradition of reproducing paintings, making them accessible to a wider audience through print technology. This image, as a reproduction, invites us to consider questions of authenticity, and how its circulation affects its meaning. What does it mean to encounter history through the lens of photography, a technology then still in its relative infancy? What is gained or lost when a painting is translated into a reproducible image? How does its history change when the audience shifts from local to global? Consider what is amplified, what is silenced, and what is transformed. The emotional resonance of the scene shifts as it moves from the realm of the unique painted object to the mass-produced photographic print.