Fire, from The Four Elements 1738 - 1749

Pierre Alexandre Aveline made this print, "Fire, from The Four Elements," sometime in the first half of the 18th century, using etching and engraving. Look closely, and you’ll see it's a composition of incredible detail, achieved through the precise, laborious process of incising lines into a metal plate, inking it, and then pressing it onto paper. The controlled application of pressure is key to transferring the image. The print depicts an imagined scene of Chinese figures around a stove. But it is the *labor* involved in both the scene represented, and the process used to create the image, that is most revealing. This division of labor, combined with the efficient reproducibility of printmaking, was essential to the rise of mass media and global trade in the 18th century. Aveline’s image encapsulates the complex interplay between artistic creation, cultural representation, and the burgeoning forces of commerce that defined his time.