Kruisdraging before 1732

Gabriel Huquier created this print of the ‘Kruisdraging’, or ‘Bearing of the Cross’, sometime in the first half of the 18th century. Huquier here presents us with an image of the suffering Christ, a powerful and very common subject for artists in the early modern period. But rather than focusing on the divine, images like this also speak to the political and social conditions of the time. Consider the relationship between power and suffering, and how that plays out in the hierarchies of social class. Who is forced to suffer, and who profits from it? As art historians, we can look to a wide variety of resources to better understand this image. We might look to theological texts to better understand the meaning of Christ’s suffering. Or we might look at social histories of 18th-century Europe to better understand the social function of images like this.