Vijf heiligen 1668 - 1671

This print of five saints was made by Jan de Bisschop sometime in the 17th century. De Bisschop was a lawyer by day, but he also had a serious artistic practice focused on etching. The way these figures are articulated has everything to do with the etching process itself. The artist would have used a sharp needle to draw through a waxy ground on a metal plate, then bathed the plate in acid to bite the lines. The fineness of the lines, and their close proximity, allowed de Bisschop to give the figures a full three-dimensionality. You can really see the influence of classical sculpture. And this brings us to the deeper significance of this print. It demonstrates how a relatively accessible medium – printmaking – could be used to disseminate a visual language that was otherwise reserved for the elite. In that sense, de Bisschop was an agent of democratization. He translated the imposing grandeur of sculpture into a widely available format.