Twee cartouches 1657 - 1685

These two cartouches were etched anonymously, and we can only guess at their origins and date. The print is an elaborate visual language, intended not as a finished work in itself, but as models for other artists. Images such as these were part of a complex visual culture, circulating widely and serving as resources for sculptors, painters, and architects. Their appeal lay in the possibility of being adapted in any number of ways, as frames for portraits, or as isolated decorative motifs. The anonymous printmaker is therefore working within a set of institutional arrangements. He supplies the raw material, the basic vocabulary, and the end user takes it from there. To more fully understand this print, we would need to examine the networks through which such images circulated. Who used them, and how? What workshops and artistic academies did they pass through? Ultimately, such investigations point to the social life of images, the way they are used to produce and reproduce social relations.