Illustration XIV 15th-16th century

Editor: This is Illustration XIV by an anonymous artist, held at the Harvard Art Museums. It’s a striking image, this woodcut, because you can really see the marks of the tool that created it. What's your take on this piece? Curator: The linear quality suggests the labor involved in its creation. We can look at the materiality of the woodblock itself, how it facilitated the mass production of images, and consider its place in the economy of visual culture at the time. How does the act of replication change the message? Editor: That’s a great point. I hadn’t considered the impact of the printing process itself. Curator: Exactly. Think about who would have had access to this print, and how that shapes our understanding of its purpose. It’s about the people and the process as much as the image itself.