Cartouche voor wapenschild c. 1630 - 1680

This “Cartouche for coat of arms” was made by an anonymous artist in an unknown place, using pen and brush in brown ink. This piece is all about surface. Look closely, and you’ll see the artist was less concerned with accurately depicting form, than with the sheer effect of light and shadow. It is a demonstration of virtuosity, rendered in a very unforgiving medium. Brown ink offers little possibility of amendment. There’s a lot of controlled labor on display here; many hours must have been spent mastering the hand skills required to render this type of drawing. At the same time, it’s important to remember the social context in which this drawing would have been made. The relative ease of drawing on paper as opposed to, say, carving stone, opened up new possibilities for those who were not part of established workshops. Through the skilled application of humble materials, artists could achieve a status that might otherwise have been unavailable to them.