Portret van Marie Louise van Oostenrijk 1801 - 1822

Pierre Audouin made this print of Marie Louise of Austria sometime in the early 1800s. It's made using a technique called etching, where lines are bitten into a metal plate with acid, and then filled with ink and printed. Consider the labor involved. A skilled printmaker would have carefully translated a painted portrait into this graphic form, line by painstaking line. There's real skill and precision at play. Yet, the point of making a print like this was to disseminate an image widely. In this case, the subject is Marie Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte's second wife, and therefore Empress of France. By making her likeness reproducible, Audouin participated in the construction of her image, and by extension, the legitimacy of the French empire. Ultimately, this print shows how the handcraft of etching could be harnessed to political ends, blurring the lines between art, propaganda, and the machinery of state.