Mars op de wolken 1599 - 1603

Jacob Matham made this print of Mars, the god of war, sometime around the turn of the 17th century, using an engraving technique. The image is created by carefully incising lines into a copper plate, which would have been a laborious process of mark-making. The depth of the lines determines how much ink they hold, and thus how dark they appear in the final print. Note the incredible amount of work that has gone into the swirling clouds, and the muscular definition of Mars himself. Matham would have needed to be both a skilled draftsman and a highly trained artisan to create this image. His mastery of the burin, the tool used to cut the lines, allowed him to create subtle gradations of tone and texture, mimicking the effects of painting. This combination of intellectual and manual skill speaks to a broader point: that the most powerful art often arises when these two sides of human creativity come together.