Portret van Barthold Hinrich Brockes 1744

This engraving is a portrait of Barthold Heinrich Brockes, made by Christian Fritzsch. Here we see a senator of Hamburg, his status proclaimed in the Latin inscription. The trappings of learning and the accoutrements of wealth—the books, the heavy curtain, and the embroidered clothing—speak to Brockes' social position. But how did an artist like Fritzsch gain status in the period? The institutions of art, such as academies, played a key role in shaping artistic careers. In the German lands, the Baroque era saw the development of printmaking as a key means of disseminating images and building reputations, especially in cities such as Augsburg and Nuremberg. To fully understand the portrait, we can draw on resources such as period directories and guild records, which can shed light on the image’s significance for contemporaries. By exploring these avenues, we can appreciate how meaning is contingent on its original social and institutional context.