Un barone antico 1598

This is Christoph Krieger’s “Un barone antico,” an image created using woodcut, a relief printing technique. The process starts with a design drawn onto a block of wood. The artist then carves away the areas that should remain white, leaving the lines to be printed raised. The image depicts an ancient baron with a falcon, framed within an ornate border. The technique lends itself to bold, graphic designs with strong contrasts, as we can see from the lines that define the baron's clothes and the falcon's feathers. Woodcut as a technique has a long and storied history. Before industrial printing methods, woodcut allowed for the relatively quick production of images, spreading visual information widely. In this work, the traditional technique has been used to showcase the ancient baron, and maybe even point to some questions about social hierarchy, and the consumption of luxury goods. Ultimately, the impact of "Un barone antico" lies not just in its subject matter, but in the labor and process of its making, blurring the lines between craft and fine art.