Heilige Sebastiaan vastgebonden aan zuil met pijl in lichaam 1500 - 1527

Marcantonio Raimondi made this small engraving, depicting Saint Sebastian, in the early 16th century. Engraving is an exacting process. The artist uses a tool called a burin to manually cut lines into a metal plate, which is then inked and printed. Look closely and you can see how the image emerges from the accumulation of these precisely placed lines. The technique flourished in the Renaissance, as printmaking allowed for the relatively cheap reproduction of images. Raimondi himself was extremely influential; he made prints after the work of Raphael, effectively disseminating the High Renaissance style across Europe. It's worth considering the social context in which this kind of image operated. Printmaking was a business, not unlike publishing today. Raimondi’s workshop employed several people, and his prints were commercial objects. When we consider this, we begin to see this small but powerful print as part of a much larger economic and cultural network.