Apollo 

This print of Apollo was made by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who lived in the 1700s. Piranesi was not a sculptor himself. He was, rather, a master of etching, a printmaking process that involves biting lines into a metal plate with acid, inking it, and then running it through a press. With this rather indirect process, Piranesi made himself into one of the most important interpreters of the classical world. Note how the etched lines precisely follow the contours of the statue, giving a strong sense of its three-dimensionality and surface texture. Piranesi's prints like this one were often bound into albums, which served as a sort of virtual museum for wealthy Europeans making the Grand Tour. In this way, printmaking served as a crucial engine of cultural distribution, a technology that put ancient art in the service of modern audiences. It is impossible to imagine the neoclassical era without this critical process.