1630
ink
paper
From the collection of National Gallery of Art
Frontispiece for the Sacred Cosmologia (Title With Astrologers) is a 1630 ink by French 17th Century, a Baroque work, held at National Gallery of Art.
This etching shows three men standing near a large, wheel-like machine with gears. One man points upward, another holds a staff, and the third leans on a bag. Trees and a walled city stretch out behind them, with a river in the foreground. The scene looks like a mix of science and nature, drawn with fine lines and shading. The machine they’re studying looks like an astrolabe, a tool used to measure the stars. This print was made as the front page for a book about the stars and their meaning. Next, look up etching to see how artists like this made detailed prints.
Seventeenth-century French printmakers turned ink into story. Their tools were burin and acid, paper their stage. Look at the Beggar Woman with Rosary (1622), etched on laid paper, her hands folded around faith, or The…
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