Drie voorstellingen van gebeurtenissen uit de nieuwere geschiedenis 1792

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki made this print, "Three scenes from recent history," around the late 18th century, using etching. It allegorically renders some contemporary European events, but it also reveals the codes and conventions through which people understood those events. In its time, the print served as a kind of news report, but one that communicated its messages through symbolic figures and classical references. We see this, for instance, in the figure of Cupid, who presides over what seems to be the marriage of the Duke of York. The central scene shows figures gathered around a monarch beneath an Egyptian pyramid. The scene on the right seems to signify a peace treaty between Austria and Turkey. We can better understand the image and its coded messages through research into the political and social history of Europe at this time. A good starting place would be newspaper archives from the period. By studying the social context in which art is made and consumed, we can get a better sense of its meaning and how it operated in its own time.