De besnijdenis van Christus 1756

Adam Friedrich Oeser made this print of The Circumcision of Christ, but the date remains unknown. The image depicts the Jewish ceremony eight days after a boy’s birth when he is formally named and brought into the covenant of Abraham. Oeser was the director of the Academy of Art in Leipzig, Germany. In the eighteenth century, academies played a key role in shaping artistic taste by deciding what was good art and who could become an artist. They established the rules that artists were expected to follow. Religious artworks were very popular, and artists were required to depict biblical events in a way that was considered appropriate and educational. This image adopts a naturalistic rather than idealised approach. Looking at images such as this, we can use historical resources to explore the ways in which art was produced and consumed in eighteenth-century Europe, as well as how academies contributed to the development of art and culture.