Through a Glass, Darkly

Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt

From 1500-1700, printmakers in the Low Countries were, as a group, the most skilled and prolific in all of Europe, and prints, often combined with text, played an important role in Netherlandish religious culture during this period. Printmakers utilized allegory in their work to address the most fundamental issues binding the human and the divine: love, virtue, vice, sin, death, and salvation.

Through a Glass, Darkly: Allegory and Faith in Netherlandish Prints from Lucas van Leyden to Rembrandt is the first major exhibition to systematically consider the form, function, and meaning of allegorical prints produced in the Low Countries during the 16th and 17th centuries, and serves as the basis for an illustrated catalogue produced by curators Walter S. Melion, Asa Candler Griggs Professor of Art History and director of the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University, and James Clifton, director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation and curator of Renaissance and Baroque painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.


This Manifold edition of the exhibition is expected to be released in Fall 2022.

Michael C. Carlos Museum
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia