Vignetten met een anker, een hand en de ark van Noach 1894 - 1901

Antoon Derkinderen made this drawing, ‘Vignetten met een anker, een hand en de ark van Noach’ sometime around the turn of the 20th century. In it, you’ll notice the titular images arranged across three horizontal registers. The ark of Noah, a Christian symbol of salvation, is rendered in gold leaf. The images here borrow their cultural and artistic reference points from the visual language of devotional objects. We might ask what this signifies in the Netherlands, a country that had long defined itself in opposition to Catholic southern Europe, a place where religious imagery had been rejected by many Protestants as superstitious idolatry. Derkinderen's composition can be read as self-consciously conservative, harking back to a pre-modern age of faith. But his artistic sources are diverse: art historians have noted the influence of classical imagery on his style, as well as more recent symbolist tendencies. To understand this work better, we can research the artist's biography, the history of Dutch religion, and the social context for a revival of interest in devotional art.