Buste van een oude man, wijzend naar rechts 1782

This etching of an old man pointing to the right was made by Adam von Bartsch in Austria during the late 18th or early 19th century. Bartsch worked as a curator at the Imperial print collection in Vienna, an institution that shaped his artistic output. Here, the artist is reproducing a work by another artist. The print is inscribed as being made after a work by the 17th-century artist, Guercino. Austria, at this time, saw itself as the cultural heir to both Italy and the Roman Empire. In keeping with its institutional function, the print performs an act of preservation, recording and maintaining the cultural importance of an older artwork. As a curator and historian himself, Bartsch took a scholarly approach to his work, cataloging over 20,000 prints in his lifetime. It's through this kind of careful cataloging that we can now understand more about the cultural role of institutions like the Imperial Collection in the preservation of artworks.