Woman Milking a Cow, plate 3 from Four Landscapes c. 1649s

This print, *Woman Milking a Cow*, was made in the Netherlands in the mid-17th century by Cornelis Visscher. He used a process called etching, in which lines are bitten into a metal plate with acid, then filled with ink and printed onto paper. Look closely, and you’ll see that the entire image is constructed from a dense network of these lines. They create tone and texture, suggesting the rough bark of the tree, the soft fur of the animals, and the garments worn by the figures. What is interesting here is how Visscher makes a virtue of the labor-intensive printing process to depict agricultural labor. The woman milking the cow is captured mid-task, and the presence of laborers points to the economic realities of the Dutch Golden Age. While we might think of paintings as the high art of this period, prints like these were also highly prized for their detailed craftsmanship and their ability to circulate images widely. In this way, *Woman Milking a Cow* encourages us to see the value and beauty in both rural labor, and the skilled work of printmaking.