Gezelschap rondom een tafel met daarop een maaltijd 1581 - 1658

Christoffel van Sichem II created this woodcut of a mealtime gathering in the Netherlands sometime in the early to mid-17th century. The scene depicts a group of elegantly dressed individuals seated around a table laden with food and drink, inside what appears to be a wealthy home. Woodcuts like this one played a vital role in disseminating images and ideas during the period. As a relatively inexpensive and easily reproducible medium, woodcuts facilitated the spread of visual culture to a broader audience than painted works. In the context of the Dutch Republic's burgeoning print culture, images of convivial gatherings reflected and reinforced the social norms and values of the time. To fully understand this print, we would need to delve deeper into the cultural and economic history of the Dutch Golden Age. We could explore the period's visual culture through estate inventories, conduct genealogical research to find out who was buying these works, and investigate the social function of images in the Netherlands during this period.