Ein Mann ruht hinter seinem beladenen Esel aus, vor ihm steht ein Mädchen mit einem Korb 

Johann Heinrich Roos created this drawing of a man, a girl and a donkey using pen and grey ink sometime in the mid-17th century. Roos was a German artist known for his depictions of animals and rural life. But his work wasn’t simply a neutral record; it spoke to the social and economic realities of the time. Roos was born during the Thirty Years' War, and the conflict had a profound impact on the Holy Roman Empire and its institutions. It’s useful to remember that the war was driven by religion. In this drawing, Roos shows us the kind of itinerant worker whose way of life was disrupted by the rise of centralized power. As a historian, I'm interested in the economic and social conditions of 17th-century Germany, and in the ways that artists like Roos responded to those conditions. By studying archival documents, period accounts, and the work of Roos’ contemporaries, we can better understand the drawing's significance and its place in the broader history of European art and society.