Portret van Johann Konrad Pfenniger 1768 - 1817

This is Johann Heinrich Lips’s portrait of Johann Konrad Pfenniger, an engraving on paper. The image is made by cutting lines into a metal plate, applying ink, and then pressing the plate onto paper. The fineness of the lines gives a sense of light and shadow, of the sitter's character. Lips was Swiss, and like many engravers, his images helped to circulate ideas. Engraving like this was a skilled trade. It was a reproductive medium, meaning that prints like this one could spread images quickly. The work was slow and painstaking, and so the images were expensive. But they were also powerful, giving people access to faces and ideas from far away. It wasn't “fine art,” but its effects were far-reaching. It shows us that we should always consider the labor, skill, and social context that shapes what we see.