Terugkeer van de Heilige Familie uit Egypte Possibly 1600 - 1660

Moyses van Wtenbrouck made this etching, *Terugkeer van de Heilige Familie uit Egypte,* sometime in the first half of the 17th century. Wtenbrouck was working within a well-established printmaking tradition. The linear quality comes from incising lines into a metal plate, which is then inked and printed. Because this is an etching, we know acid was used to bite the lines, rather than engraving them laboriously with a burin. The composition is conceived with a sharp eye to production, with the artist varying the density of lines to create effects of light and shadow. Look closely, and you can see how much work went into creating tone in this way. The print medium allowed Wtenbrouck to disseminate his artistic vision widely, playing a crucial role in the development of a visual culture accessible to a broad audience. This was well before photography, so it was prints like these that made images readily available, influencing taste and artistic styles across Europe. Ultimately, this little print testifies to the power of reproducible media in shaping our understanding of the world.