Palazzo Doria 1622

This print of the Palazzo Doria was made by Nicolaes Ryckmans, around the early to mid-17th century. It is a black ink on paper engraving. Ryckmans was clearly interested in the building’s design, and he used the graphic language of architectural drawing to convey it. He created the image by cutting lines into a metal plate, applying ink, and transferring that to paper. The precision of this printing method suits the subject perfectly. It gives us the opportunity to consider the Doria Palace as an aesthetic object. Buildings like this existed in tension with the labor required to build and maintain them, and prints like this gave access to a different class of consumer, one who could appreciate the design without owning the asset. This print underscores the link between aesthetics, labor, and social class. It reminds us that any artwork, even a seemingly straightforward architectural study like this, is always embedded in a web of material conditions.