The Holy Family Served by Angels 1773

Simon Julien made this print called ‘The Holy Family Served by Angels’ around 1765. It's an etching, meaning that the artist would have drawn an image into a wax-covered metal plate, then bathed it in acid, which bites into the exposed lines. The plate is then inked and printed. Look closely at those lines: they have a sketchy, provisional quality, almost as if they were made on the spur of the moment. Yet the scene itself has a rather studied composition, with the figures arranged in a way that directs our eye around the domestic scene. There's something very interesting here about the contrast between the relative ease of producing a print – which in Julien's time could be made in quite large numbers, and sold relatively cheaply – and the very elevated subject matter, of the infant Christ being tended by the Virgin Mary and a host of angels. This wasn't an industrial process as such, but it did democratize images, making them newly accessible. It's a reminder that even ostensibly devotional images always have a social context.