Vrouw houdt kind vast dat op een schaap rijdt c. 1760 - 1825

Auguste Sandoz created this print of a woman holding a child on a sheep. The image resonates with classical antiquity and its artistic conventions of representing pastoral innocence. The print embodies the artistic and cultural fascination with classical forms and themes that took hold in Europe. The composition evokes the kind of imagery one might find on ancient cameos and friezes, harkening back to a perceived Golden Age of art and culture. The idealization of the human form, the flowing drapery, and even the motif of the child riding an animal, all speak to a neoclassical aesthetic, a style which served to legitimize the institutions of art in the 19th Century. The Rijksmuseum archive provides additional documents that might help us place Sandoz's work within a broader history of printmaking and the cultural values it represents. The meaning we ascribe to this print is deeply contingent on understanding the social and institutional contexts that brought it into being.