Beauty 1783

This print, titled ‘Beauty,’ was made by Francesco Bartolozzi around 1783, using a color stipple engraving technique. Look closely, and you’ll see the image is built up from thousands of tiny dots. Bartolozzi used a tool with a textured tip to create these marks on a copper plate. This painstaking process allowed him to achieve subtle gradations of tone and delicate effects of light and shadow. The warm, reddish-brown ink, called sanguine, mimics the look of a chalk drawing, a popular medium at the time. But unlike drawing, engraving allowed for the image to be reproduced many times over. Prints like this one were luxury goods, produced for an expanding consumer market. They democratized access to images, and also turned artistic skill into a commodity, bought and sold in the print shops of London. So, next time you look at a print, remember the labor, the materials, and the commercial context that brought it into being. It’s a reminder that even the most ethereal images are rooted in the material world.