Maria met kind, Josef luistert naar een engel 1500 - 1510

This ink drawing, titled *Maria met kind, Josef luistert naar een engel*, is by an anonymous artist. This tender scene of Mary and Joseph with the infant Jesus, and an angel, invites us to reflect on the family unit, and the gendered roles within it as imagined through a religious lens. We are invited to reflect on how power is structured and expressed within the domestic sphere. Consider Mary’s serene presence, and Joseph's attentive posture, indicative of a patriarchal, divinely ordained social order. Yet, the drawing complicates this reading. The artist’s choice to depict a scene that is so intimate suggests a focus on the emotional bonds between mother and child. In this way the work invites a contemplation of the divine, made immanent through familial love. In these alternative narratives, what emerges is the human within the divine, and the everyday within the sacred.