Albumblad met twee prenten van kannen 16th century

This album leaf with two prints of pitchers was made by Balthazar van den Bos, around the mid-16th century, using engraving. Engraving is an intaglio process, meaning that the image is incised into a surface, in this case a metal plate. The artist would have used a tool called a burin to cut lines into the metal, creating a design capable of printing multiple images. This required considerable skill, and a long apprenticeship. The dense, cross-hatched shading gives the pitchers volume and a sense of weightiness. You can almost feel the cool, smooth surface of the metal they are meant to represent. The prints were likely made to be collected in an album. The pitchers themselves are highly ornate, reflecting the fashion for elaborate metalwork at the time. They suggest a culture of conspicuous consumption, where even everyday objects were made into showcases of skill and wealth. Thinking about the process of engraving brings us closer to understanding the social context and values of the time, revealing the labor and skill involved in both creating and consuming such images.