Portret van Ferdinand IV, koning van Hongarije, Bohemen en het Heilige Roomse Rijk 1640 - 1646

This is an engraving portraying Ferdinand IV, King of Hungary, Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, made by Elias Widemann. The engraving technique would have involved a painstaking process of incising lines into a metal plate. The artist would have used a tool called a burin to cut precise lines into the copper, the depth of which determined the amount of ink it would hold. The plate was then inked, and wiped clean, leaving ink only in the engraved lines, and finally pressed onto paper. The material precision and skilled labor transforms the portrait into a political object: the fine lines give the subject detail and texture, emphasizing the trappings of wealth, power, and status. Each line conveys not just artistic skill, but also a political message about the sitter's importance and social class. Thinking about the object in terms of its making helps us recognize how it reflects social and economic relationships of the time.