Vignet met een harp, bijbel en evangelie op een voetstuk, waarboven een brandend hart 1751 - 1816

Reinier Vinkeles made this print – ‘Vignet with a harp, bible and gospel on a pedestal, surmounted by a burning heart’ – using engraving techniques. It's a world away from the painter's studio; instead, this print was fabricated using tools and techniques closer to those of a goldsmith. Note the incredibly fine and precise networks of lines that create the image. This wasn’t achieved with a brush but with a burin, a hardened steel tool used to incise lines into a copper plate. Ink was then applied to the plate, and the excess carefully wiped away. The remaining ink, caught in the engraved lines, was transferred to the paper under high pressure in a printing press. Engraving like this was part of a complex system of production and commerce, a world of workshops and specialists. Vinkeles was a master of his craft, and this print, with its complex iconography, testifies to the skills involved in image-making at the time. So, next time you see a print, think about the labour that went into its making, and the place of these objects within wider social and economic structures.