Ontvoering van Helena van Troje door Paris 1510 - 1527

Marcantonio Raimondi made this print, “The Abduction of Helen,” sometime in the early 16th century. He used the engraving technique, a method of image-making that involves incising lines into a metal plate, which then holds ink and transfers the image to paper. The result is this incredibly fine level of detail, which speaks to Raimondi’s mastery. But the technique also had another implication: it allowed prints like this to be made in multiples, and circulated widely. That was particularly important during the Renaissance, when a hunger for knowledge and beauty drove a robust market in prints. In this case, the image reproduces a painting, so the print served as a kind of advertisement. But it was also an artwork in its own right – and because of the labor involved in creating it, an index of economic shifts that were underway at that time. Through meticulous craft, Raimondi found a way to make art more widely accessible, and that was pretty revolutionary.