Fotoreproductie van een geschilderd portret van Lodewijk I, koning van Portugal before 1880

This is a photographic reproduction of a painted portrait of King Luís I of Portugal, created by an anonymous artist. Photography democratized portraiture. No longer requiring hours of sitting, or the expense of commissioning an oil painting, it made images like this one widely accessible. The image itself, printed on paper, possesses a textural quality that emulates the look of an original painting. Yet, its inherent reproducibility speaks to the rise of mass culture. This portrait, neatly contained within a book, becomes a commodity, to be consumed and circulated widely. The making of such an image involved a range of skilled labor, from the photographer to the printing technicians. Consider, too, the social context: the monarchy itself, increasingly reliant on symbolic gestures to maintain authority in the face of changing political tides. By looking closely at the material and its making, we see beyond the subject, to the broader social and economic forces at play.