Geloof, Hoop en Liefde in een landschap 1590

Jacob Matham made this engraving called "Faith, Hope, and Love in a Landscape" at the turn of the 17th century in the Netherlands. It uses allegory to express ideas about the virtues required of a good Christian. The image shows three female figures, each representing one of the virtues. Faith holds a cross, Hope looks to the heavens, and Love, or Charity, is surrounded by children. Matham’s choice of allegory draws on a long tradition in European art going back to classical antiquity but was particularly powerful in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Protestant Reformation had questioned the Catholic Church's use of imagery. Engravings like this were one way that artists responded to the challenge, finding ways to represent abstract ideas through familiar visual codes. To understand this print fully, we can look to the writings of theologians and the art of Matham's contemporaries to better understand the visual language he was using and the debates in which he was participating.