Jacoba van Beieren valt flauw 1771

Simon Fokke made this print, Jacoba van Beieren falls faint, sometime in the 18th century. It presents us with a dramatic scene: a woman swoons, surrounded by courtiers in period dress. The print revives a moment from the 15th century, when Jacoba van Beieren, or Jacqueline of Bavaria, was a powerful noblewoman whose control of lands in the Low Countries was contested by powerful men. Fokke’s image, made for a print market, romanticizes a past moment of dynastic and political conflict. The image creates meaning through visual codes of distress, as Jacoba’s helplessness makes her dependent on male strength. Prints like these fed into a growing sense of national history, and we can see how the Rijksmuseum is now the institutional caretaker of this visual culture. We can better understand the print by studying the political climate of the 18th-century Dutch Republic, exploring the relationship between publishers and artists, and by looking at the vogue for historical dramas on the stage. The meaning of this print is contingent on its social and institutional context.