Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law from God who descends from the heavens; from the series of 112 prints of the sacred history, after the painting by Mattia Preti 1725 - 1744

This print of Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law was made by Pietro Monaco in the 18th century, after a painting by Mattia Preti. It’s an engraving, meaning that the image was incised into a metal plate, which was then inked and pressed onto paper. Look closely, and you can see the astonishing amount of labor that went into this process. Every line is the result of a physical action, a cut made by hand. Note too, that this is a reproduction of a painting. It is already once-removed from the subject. Monaco never saw God, or Moses, or Preti’s painting. The print participates in a burgeoning economy of images, in which the skillful handwork of engravers made artworks accessible to a wide public, even if only in monochrome. So while the subject is sacred history, the object itself is very much tied to the commercial realities of its time. It challenges any firm distinction between art and craft.