Portret van Alexander Sergejewitsch Puschkin 1822 - 1845

This undated portrait of Alexander Pushkin is an engraving, an image incised into a metal plate, inked, and then printed onto paper. The engraver’s tools create a vocabulary of lines and dots, which can be manipulated to give the illusion of volume, shadow, and even the texture of fabric. You can see this in the soft, almost fuzzy rendering of Pushkin’s hair, and the crispness of his collar. It's no accident that the medium of engraving rose to prominence alongside the expansion of the printing press. Engravings allowed images to be reproduced and disseminated widely, fueling the growth of a visual culture that mirrored the burgeoning literary world. The engraver, often anonymous as in this case, became a vital conduit, translating likeness and artistry into a commodity available to a broader public. Considering its making, we realize this image is more than a portrait, it is an artifact of a changing social landscape, where art, authorship, and access were being redefined by the mechanics of production.