Through a Glass, Darkly: Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt
The term Allegory—etymologically, "other speaking"—alludes to a metaphorical process whereby images of people, objects, or events come to stand for something else, often a broader concept or message. This exhibition explores how and why visual allegory, especially in the medium of print, played a crucial role in scriptural interpretation and the religious debates that consumed the Low Countries during the 16th and 17 Centuries, as Protestants and Roman Catholics warred with each other and vied for Christian souls. Printed images, often accompanied by text and easily disseminated to an audience of both clergy and laity, enmeshed reader-viewers in these doctrinal debates; in the hands of the virtuoso printmakers of the Low Countries, visual allegory became a well-honed tool used for moral instruction and spiritual edification.
The exhibition's ninety prints created between 1500 and 1700, are grouped into five sections—Stilled, Enacted, Paraoblic, Emblematic, and Heuristic—designed to clarify processes of allegorical image-making. Although the exhibition primarily aims to exemplify these five categories, it also makes every effort to explain the biblical, historical, political, and moral subject matter of the individual works. The Dutch and Flemish masters featured here—Lucas van Leyden, Dirk Vellert, Philips Galle, Dirck Volckersrtz. Coornhert, Hans Bol, Hendrick Goltzius, and Rembrandt van Rijn, to name but a few—dealt in allegory. Their prints reveal much about the nature and meaning of allegory as it was understood at the time.
These prints were first acquired for the purposes of personal education, devotion, and improvement. They required that their reader-viewer, both clerical and lay, substantially commit their minds and hearts to the task of reading and viewing them. The exhibition title is borrowed from the apostle Paul's famous remark in 1 Corinthians 13:12, "We see now through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." The Pauline passage is an allegorical metaphor for the obscurity of God's truth, the inadequacy of human understanding, and the promise of ultimate revelation. In this context it also points to the opacity of some of these allegorical images and the interpretive challenges that they present. For most reader-viewers in the sixteenth and seventeenth Centuries, these images elicited and responded to their spiritual desires, engaged their intellective faculties, and sharpened their interpretive skills. They demonstrate the potential for a profound working relationship between object and reader-viewer. Sometimes this relationship requires reader-viewers—from both the early-modern period and our own—a great deal of effort, but the rewards of such work can be pleasing, fulfilling, and potentially transformative.
This exhibition has been made possible through generous support from the Michael C. Carlos Museum's Visiting Board, the Massey Charitable Trust, the Art Dealer's Association of America Foundation, and the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.
