Psyche Going to Dress 1786

Francesco Bartolozzi made "Psyche Going to Dress" using engraving, a printmaking technique with a long and skilled tradition behind it. The image begins as a design, carefully incised into a metal plate, probably copper. The engraver then applies ink to the plate, wipes it clean, and presses paper against its surface. The resulting print captures the fine lines of the original design, creating the soft image we see here. In Bartolozzi’s time, printmaking was a key part of the wider world of commerce. Prints were relatively cheap to produce and could be sold widely. This made art accessible to a broader public, and created new opportunities for artists and publishers alike. In many ways, printmaking democratized art, taking it out of the realm of unique, hand-made objects and into a world of reproducibility and consumption. The result is an artwork that reflects not only skill and creativity, but also the social and economic context of its making.