Dido en Aeneas overvallen door een storm 1721 - 1767

Giuseppe Zocchi created this print, "Dido en Aeneas overvallen door een storm," using etching, a precise yet labor-intensive process. The linear quality owes to the way an etching is made. A metal plate, likely copper, is coated with a waxy ground. The artist then draws through the ground, exposing the metal. Immersed in acid, the lines are bitten into the plate. This painstaking process emphasizes control and planning, requiring the artist to consider line weight and density to create tonal variation. The print would have been made for an expanding market of collectors. The very act of creating multiples speaks to shifting social conditions of production, labor, and consumption. As viewers, we can appreciate the skill required to create such detail. Yet this print also reminds us of the artist's hand and time, mediated by the reproducibility of printmaking.