Portret van Jan II, graaf van Holland 1745

Hendrik Spilman made this engraving of Jan II, count of Holland, sometime in the 18th century. As an engraving, it's made by cutting lines into a metal plate, inking the surface, and then wiping it clean so that ink remains only in the incisions. When the plate is pressed onto paper, the image transfers. Consider how this process influences the image we see. The lines are precise, economical, and repeatable. This was a medium well-suited to spreading images widely, in the service of political messaging and the circulation of knowledge. The hatching is really beautiful: notice how skillfully Spilman evokes textures and volumes with a simple vocabulary of marks. It's worth remembering that while Spilman was a skilled artist, he was also part of a larger system of production. The print would have been made in multiples, to be sold for profit, making Spilman both an artist and an artisan, blurring the lines between the supposedly separate worlds of art and craft.