The Marquis Giovanni Visconti Venosta 1922

Walter Tittle made this portrait of The Marquis Giovanni Visconti Venosta, using a plate of about 30 by 25 centimeters. Looking at this print, I imagine the artist, Tittle, hunched over his materials, carefully etching the lines that define the Marquis’s face. There’s a real delicacy to the marks. I can imagine the scratching sound and resistance of the metal, and how the tiniest of changes in pressure could shift the mood, the feeling of the portrait. The way the dark shadows around the figure contrast with the open space of the white paper really creates a sense of depth. There’s this interesting tension between capturing the likeness of a person and the freedom of mark-making itself. The way the shading almost dissolves into abstraction around the shoulders and jaw, and then resolves in the eyes. It feels like he is breathing. In looking closely, I think about how all artists are in an ongoing conversation, each influencing and pushing the boundaries of representation. It's never really fixed, is it?