Begrafenisstoet van Willem III, koning der Nederlanden, 1890 1891

Pierre Emile Tilly made this print in 1890, depicting the funeral procession of Willem III, King of the Netherlands. It's an engraving, which means the artist would have used a tool called a burin to carve the image into a metal plate, probably copper. The resulting lines are very fine and precise, allowing for a high level of detail. Look at the way he’s captured the texture of the crowd, the architecture, and the horses. The image is made up of thousands of tiny marks, each one carefully placed, so the labor intensity of this work is palpable. Engraving was a skilled craft, often associated with commercial printing, meaning that even a royal event like this was translated into a commodity, available for purchase and circulation. That gives you a sense of the society at the time, one in which even grand spectacle was mediated by the mechanics of reproduction. It reminds us that art is always embedded in systems of labor and class.