Besnijdenis van Christus 1679 - 1728

Johannes Gronsveld created this print of the Circumcision of Christ sometime around the turn of the 18th century. It is an etching – a print made from an image incised with acid on a metal plate – a common medium for the inexpensive reproduction of art in the Netherlands and across Europe at that time. Gronsveld was not the originator of this design; his inscription tells us that it was based on a painting by Paolo Veronese, a Venetian artist of the previous century. Printmakers like Gronsveld often made their living by disseminating the work of celebrated painters to a wider audience. The question is, what was the market for this image? The scene depicts an important moment in Christian theology, but it is also a deeply Jewish one. To understand the image's place in Dutch society, we might ask what scholars have written about the representation of Jewish people in the Netherlands, how the Bible was interpreted in the Protestant faith, or how Dutch artists understood Italian art.