Officiersvrouw en houtdrager 1641

Crispijn van de Passe the second made this engraving, “Officer's Wife and Wood Carrier,” sometime in the 17th century. The printmaking process is fascinating: the artist would have used a tool called a burin to manually carve lines into a copper plate, creating an image in reverse. Look closely, and you can see the fineness of the lines. The artist is almost surgically precise. Van de Passe’s technical skill underscores a growing division of labor in the early modern period. The wood carrier performs physical work, while the officer’s wife embodies a life of relative leisure, as she is accompanied by a pet dog. But, the image itself is also the product of labor. Engravings like this one were reproduced in multiples, making imagery newly accessible to a wider audience. The act of engraving itself is laborious, requiring not only artistic skill but also patience and precision. In considering this print, we are reminded that artistic creation is always intertwined with broader social and economic forces. We shouldn’t separate ‘art’ from ‘craft’ in our minds.