St. Cecilia on Clouds Upheld by Angels 1696

Peter Berchet made this print, St. Cecilia on Clouds Upheld by Angels, sometime between the late 17th and early 18th century. It’s an etching, meaning the artist coated a metal plate with wax, scratched an image into it, and then bathed the plate in acid, which bit into the exposed lines. Look closely, and you can see how the varying pressure of Berchet’s hand has created lines of different depths and thicknesses. This is particularly visible in the drapery, and in the dense cloudscape around St. Cecilia. The relative ease of this printing technique allowed for a wider dissemination of images. Prints were often made after paintings, making artworks accessible to people of lower economic classes who otherwise would not have been able to see them. Consider, too, that the making of prints like these was often highly collaborative, involving not only the artist, but also printers and publishers. So, next time you look at a print, remember that its apparent simplicity belies a complex matrix of labor, materials, and social context.