Through a Glass, Darkly

Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt

Exhibition Website

Aug 31 2019 - Dec 1 2019

From 1500-1700, printmakers in the Low Countries were, as a group, the most skilled and prolific in all of Europe, and prints, often combined with text, played an important role in Netherlandish religious culture during this period. Printmakers utilized allegory in their work to address the most fundamental issues binding the human and the divine: love, virtue, vice, sin, death, and salvation.

Through a Glass, Darkly will be the first major exhibition to systematically consider the form, function, and meaning of allegorical prints produced in the Low Countries during the 16th and 17th centuries. Contemporary viewers will find themselves face to face with highly affective allegorical images, on the same journey towards understanding that the images’ intended audience would have undertaken. Though specific to the Low Countries during the 16th and 17th centuries, a period when understanding allegory was crucial to knowing God’s truth, Through a Glass, Darkly speaks more broadly to the communicative power of allegory and the way meaning is generated, conveyed, and interpreted.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Image: Jan Sadeler (Flemish, 1550-1600), after Dirck Barendsz (Netherlandish, 1534-1592). Hell, late 16th
century. Engraving. Gift of Walter Melion and John Clum.

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