Amor spelend met twee jongens 1560 - 1580

This image is of an engraving titled 'Amor spelend met twee jongens,' (Cupid Playing with Two Boys). The piece, created by an anonymous artist, depicts three nude, winged children playfully fighting in a classical interior, sometime in the past. The image complicates traditional views of childhood innocence. The cherubic figures engage in a rough-and-tumble scene that seems to hint at aggression and the struggle for dominance. The artist plays with the cultural expectation of boys as active and assertive, even in their earliest years. The wings suggest these boys may be angels, yet they exist within the confines of earth. Their humanity is emphasized, suggesting an engagement with the viewer’s own societal expectations of youthful masculinity. The image asks us to consider what we, as a society, project onto childhood, and how such expectations may shape and define gendered behavior from a very young age. It confronts us with an aspect of identity that is both personal and socially constructed.