Spoiled children 1903

Enrico Nardi made this image called Spoiled Children using engraving. Can you imagine Nardi bent over his tools, with a magnifying glass perhaps, carefully etching away at a metal plate to create this tableau? I sympathize with him. This image is full of detail and I know that process. I spend hours, days, weeks, working on a single painting, adding layer upon layer, each mark building upon the last. I wonder if he felt the same kind of dedication and frustration? Look at the way the lines are used to create texture and depth. The walls look so rough, while the fabrics have a soft sheen. Notice how the faces are rendered with such detail, especially the spoiled child himself, with his mouth agape, mid-tantrum. Engravers, painters, sculptors – we're all just trying to make sense of the world through our work, building on each other’s ideas and techniques. It's like one big, ongoing conversation. And, like any good conversation, it's full of surprises and unexpected turns.