Bacchide Enunes en Monime 1819

Bartolomeo Pinelli made this print of Bacchide Enunes en Monime, using etching, sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century. The image is built up of closely-worked lines, describing form through hatching and cross-hatching. Printmaking, like drawing, is fundamentally a reproductive medium. The whole point is to produce multiple impressions. In Pinelli’s time, etching was crucial to the expansion of the art market. It allowed for relatively inexpensive images to be made available to a growing middle class. Although it looks spontaneous, etching actually involves quite a bit of labor. A metal plate is coated in wax, the artist scratches an image into the wax, and then acid eats away the exposed metal. When the plate is inked and run through a press, multiple copies can be made. The beauty of etching is that it mimics the fluidity of drawing, but the real social significance lies in its capacity for mass production. This is an artwork that testifies to the changing economies of image-making.