Le!: Richard Earlom a!

er Joseph Wright of Derby, The Blacksmith Shop,

1771, mezzo"nt ii/ii (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland); right: Joseph
Wright of Derby, The Blacksmith Shop, 1771, oil on canvas, 128.3 x
104.1 cm (Yale Center for Bri"sh Art, New Haven)

Aqua!nt
Aqua"nt is a variant of the etching process that
produces broad areas of tone that resemble the
visual effects of watercolor. It involves the use of a
powdered resin that is adhered to the plate
through controlled hea"ng. As the resin bonds to
the plate, it creates a network of linear channels of
exposed metal (think of how a cake of mud that is
dried in the sun has a web of cracks). Once the
plate is bi$en by acid, the areas of exposed metal
form deep grooves that are capable of holding ink.
Francisco de Goya is famous for his artworks using aqua"nt. Goya, Los
Caprichos: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1799, etching and
aqua"nt, 21.2 x 15.0 cm (Bri"sh Museum, London)

Aqua"nt was first introduced in the mid-

seventeenth century in Amsterdam. Yet, unlike
other printmaking techniques that found
immediate a$rac"on, it would take some "me
before aqua"nt became more widely used. By the
late eighteenth century, several English etchers
had become drawn to the more painterly quali"es
of aqua"nt, but the medium arguably achieved its
greatest acclaim under the Spanish ar"st,
Francisco de Goya. To make The Sleep of Reason
Produces Monsters, Goya first etched his sleeping
ar"st, the bats, and haun"ng cat with quick lines.
From there, he switched to aqua"nt to render the
ominous shadow that envelops the en"re
composi"on and the white le$ers on the front of
the ar"st’s desk.

An example of a mul"-sheet composi"on. Albrecht Dürer, Large

Triumphal Carriage, c. 1518−1522, woodcut (Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York)

The business of printmaking

Printmaking in early modern Europe was a
complex enterprise that involved a number of
different agents. It was not always the case that
the individual responsible for carving the
woodblock or incising the metal plate was the
designer of the composi"on. When Dürer was
commissioned by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian
I to design a complex, mul"-sheet composi"on of
the Large Triumphal Carriage, he teamed up with a
talented workshop of block carvers to help him
execute that grand-scale project. In some
workshops, the figure who undertook the physical
process of prin"ng the blocks and plates may have
only done that job. Addi"onally, there may have
been a separate posi"on dedicated to print
publishing, that is selling and distribu"ng the
prints. Depending on the size of a workshop and
the equipment available, some printmakers or
publishers had to contract out some of those
tasks. For example, if a publishing shop did not
own a press, it had to collaborate with another
local shop to produce its prints. Early printmaking
revolved around a sophis"cated network of ar"sts
and businessmen, and this legacy is s"ll seen
today. Many contemporary printmakers partner
with a prin"ng shop to create their work and/or a
commercial gallery to exhibit and sell their art.
Mar"n Luther was an Augus"nian monk and professor of theology in
Wi$enberg. He posted his 95 Theses on the door of the castle church in
Wi$enberg—at least, this is how the tradi"on tells the story—that took
issue with the way in which the Catholic Church thought about
salva"on, and it specifically took issue with the selling of indulgences.
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Mar!n Luther as an Augus!nian Monk, 1520,
engraving, 15.8 x 10.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The advent of print not only transformed how

images were made, but it created new possibili"es
for art collec"ng and mass communica"on.
Scholars have long recognized how the mass
distribu"on of printed pamphlets cri"cizing the
Roman Church’s sale of indulgences and the
pope’s supremacy along with printed portraits of
Mar"n Luther, such as Cranach’s Mar!n Luther as
an Augus!nian Monk, spurred on a religious
revolu"on in northern Europe by promo"ng the
agenda of Protestant Reformers.

Books made in early colonial Mexico o!en stressed the importance of

images in the process of conver"ng Indigenous peoples. Juan Bau"sta,
Confessionario en lengua mexicana y castellana [Prepara"on of the
penitents in Nahuatl and Spanish] (San"ago Tlatelolco: Melchor
Ocharte, 1599), 1v–2r (John Carter Brown Library)
The portability, reproducibility, and affordability of
printed composi"ons contributed to the exchange
of informa"on and ideas between cultures of
distant geographies. European missionaries who
journeyed to the Americas beginning in the
sixteenth century brought with them prints of
biblical figures that were subsequently
disseminated among Indigenous popula"ons in an
effort to convert those local communi"es to
Chris"anity. This kind of imagery also introduced
Indigenous ar"sts to new iconographies, visual
tradi"ons, and technologies that greatly impacted
the ar"s"c produc"on in the Americas. In fact,
during the mid-sixteenth century, the first prin"ng
shop was established in modern-day Mexico City
and a few decades later Peru transformed into
another important center for printmaking in the
southern hemisphere. What we consider to be
“mass media” today, certainly has its origins in the
early modern world of printmaking.

Addi!onal resources:

Giulia Bartrum, German Renaissance Prints,

1490−1550 (London: Bri"sh Museum Press, 1995)

Michael Bury, The Print in Italy, 1550−1620

(London: The Bri"sh Museum Press, 2001)

Kelly Donahue-Wallace, “Picturing Prints in Early

Modern New Spain,” The Americas 64, no. 3
(January 2008): 325−349

Antony Griffiths, The Print Before Photography: An

Introduc!on to European Printmaking 1550−1820
(London: The Bri"sh Museum, 2016)

The Printed Image in the West: Aqua"nt at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Printed Image in the West: Drypoint at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Printed Image in the West: Engraving at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Printed Image in the West: Etching at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Printed Image in the West: Mezzo"nt at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

The Printed Image in the West: Woodcut at the

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

William M. Ivins Jr., How Prints Look: Photographs

with Commentary, rev. ed. Marjorie B. Cohn
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1987)

David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance

Print, 1470−1550 (New Haven, CT and London:
Yale University Press, 1994)
Peter Parshall and Rainer Schoch, eds., Origins of
European Printmaking: Fi#eenth-Century Woodcuts
and Their Public (Washington D.C.: Na"onal Gallery
of Art; Nuremberg: Germanisches
Na"onalmuseum, 2005)

Ad S"jnman, Engraving and Etching 1400−2000: A

History of the Development of Manual Intaglio
Printmaking Processes (Houten, Netherlands: HES
& De Graaf, 2012)

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lila.norris2006 2 months ago

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Why aren't most off the artwork

acknowledged by youth today?
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2 months
ago
m…
drszucker
From the author:

It's an interes"ng ques"on. Here

are a few thoughts that come to
mind. Art history is not taught in
most schools, art is not usually
promoted by large corpora"ons
that seek to profit from young
people as is the case with music,
movies, fashion, and so much
popular culture.
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Giles wilson 7 days ago

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does this have to be this long I mean come

on it took me like 15 minutes to read it
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Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manu!us): inventor of the
modern book