Ornamentlijst met putti en mascarons 1559

This ornamental border with putti and mascarons was probably made as a woodcut, a relatively accessible mode of production. The artist, Andreas Gessner, incised the image into a block of wood, then transferred it to paper through printing. Note how the black lines are crisp and precise, which would have required considerable skill and time to achieve. The symmetry and repetition suggest a systemized process, like a factory-made product. Yet there are also variations, particularly in the faces of the putti and mascarons, indicating the hand of the maker. The labor involved speaks to the social context of printmaking at this time. While the end result may have been relatively affordable, the initial creation of the woodblock was clearly a skilled undertaking. We can therefore see in this printmaking a combination of manual work and nascent industrialization, reflective of a changing economy and class structure.