Afgezant van Abner knielt voor David 1525 - 1530

This anonymous print depicts a biblical scene, 'Afgezant van Abner knielt voor David', and was made using woodcut. The image presents us with some interesting questions about the social and political role of religious imagery in the Netherlands. The print translates a story from the Bible into a visual language that would have resonated with a 16th or 17th century audience in the Netherlands. Note the clothing, which is not biblical but of the time the artwork was made. The architecture is similarly of the time. We might ask, what was the public role of this kind of art at the time? Prints such as this were widely circulated and relatively inexpensive. In whose interest was it to produce such images, and what was their purpose? What are the politics of representing biblical stories in this way? These are the kinds of questions that an art historian might ask. To understand the social context of this print, we would need to research the history of printmaking in the Netherlands, as well as the religious and political beliefs of the time.