Europa 1705 - 1775

This etching titled "Europa" was made by an anonymous artist. The composition is divided between instruments of war and an idyllic love scene, which brings to mind a well-known trope of courtly love that was prominent in Europe at this time. However, these prints were produced and collected in albums, which were then traded and sold in the marketplace. So, if we want to better understand the culture around these images, we need to consider how they were used. What type of person or institution was collecting them? Were they being archived or used as a source of entertainment? Were they produced in mass? These are the questions to consider if you want to better understand the place of this image in its culture. By consulting catalogues, inventories of print collections, and other archival sources, we can reconstruct the social life of this print and better understand its historical significance.