Printmaking Social Status And The Death Of The Virgin

Kenzie Kee

Research Paper

March 29th, 2023

Printmaking, Social Status, and The Death of the Virgin In the late fifteenth and particularly sixteenth centuries printmaking became incredibly popular; and it wasn’t just a lower art form, the technique and status of printmakers also developed rapidly. Painters of that time like renowned artist, Albrecht Dürer, began their exploration of the printmaking medium. The work of art to be examined in this article is the engraving of The Death of the Virgin by Philips Galle, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1574. The reason for the increased popularity of printmaking was because of practicality–the widespread availability of paper. One reason that artists liked printmaking so much was because they could

What once was only accessible to the rich elites and people of power, now was trickling down, “Hereby tongues are knowne, knowledge groweth, judgement increaseth, books are dispersed, the scripture is seen, the Doctors be read, stories be opened, times compared, truth discerned, falsehood detected, and with fingers poynted, and all (as I says) through the benefit of printing.” As more and more people were able to access and engage with works of art, more and more people began to make their own personal observations. Observation underwent a transformation in the Renaissance from something low-level and trivial to something profound and elite. Furthermore, interpretive conflict began to cause friction between different classes of society. “Class and education are generally the root of those pressures. After all, interpretive skill, which is itself a form of power, tends to be a rare commodity. Censorship is only partly a problem of subject matter; it is also, perhaps even mainly, a problem of mediation – control of not only what you look at, but also how and when you do so.” Returning to The Death of the Virgin, the more people that had access to it, the more people that were essentially invited to prayer. There would be more people critiquing whether or not they agree with the depiction of the Virgin death represented and worded the way Ortelius wanted. Ortelius had a higher-class perception of the work, and it ultimately ended up in the hands of another well-esteemed friend of Bruegel, Peter Rubens. This particular piece was only meant to be enjoyed by the higher