Engeltje naar achter leunend 1630 - 1652

Pieter van Avont made this print of a reclining cherub with etching techniques. The chubby figure is idealized, but there's something grotesque in the cherub's fleshy neck, and in the way he props himself up on stubby legs, one arm raised. This mixture of high and low, ideal and real, was characteristic of art made in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The Dutch Republic was a mercantile society where patronage was more often from the middle classes than the aristocracy, and it's clear that there was a market for art that mixed religious, mythological, and secular themes. To get a clearer sense of that market, we can look at estate inventories and auction catalogs of the time. These archival sources can tell us how much such images were sold for, and what kinds of homes they were displayed in. This cherub, like all art, is meaningful in ways that are contingent on its social and institutional context.