Portret van kardinaal Francesco Borghese 1729 - 1731

This is an engraving of Cardinal Francesco Borghese, made by Gasparo Massi, probably around 1729, the year Borghese was appointed Cardinal. As an engraving, the picture exists because of an intense labor process. First, the artist would have used a tool called a burin to manually carve lines into a copper plate. This would be painstaking work, requiring immense skill and precision. Ink would then be applied to the plate, and the surface wiped clean, leaving ink only in the incised lines. The plate would be pressed onto paper, leaving this image. This was of course a reproductive medium, and so the image could be printed many times. But each of those prints required the artist to have first done this incredibly demanding work. The resulting proliferation of images made the Cardinal visible and, in a sense, knowable to many more people. This highlights the tight relationship between material processes, social status, and the rise of modern visual culture.