{"product_id":"bartholomaus-kilian-copperplate-portrait-of-johann-conrad-sondershausen-1680-plate","title":"Bartholomäus Kilian Copperplate Portrait of Johann Conrad Sondershausen, 1680 Plate","description":"\u003cp\u003eI bought this because the guy is wearing an absolutely enormous ruff and has vaguely mysterious expression.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat's it. That was the whole reason. Then I got it home, started reading the tiny lettering underneath the picture, and it turned into something interesting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, what this actually is. In 1680, if you wanted a picture of someone, there were no photographs. A painter painted them. Then, if you wanted copies, somebody sat down with a sheet of copper and a sharp tool and carved that painting into the metal by hand, line by line, backwards, over months. Ink gets rubbed into the grooves, wiped off the surface, and paper gets pressed onto the plate hard enough to squeeze the ink out of the lines. That's an engraving. Every line you see on this paper is a groove a person cut into metal by hand, three and a half centuries ago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe man in it is Johann Conrad Sondershausen. He was a Lutheran preacher in Frankfurt, Germany. The lettering tells you he's 48 and in his seventeenth year on the job.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe was born in 1632, in the middle of a war that ran for thirty years and killed something like a third of everybody in Germany. Armies moved through towns and took the food. Plague followed the armies. He was a small child for the worst of it and sixteen when it finally stopped. That's the world this guy grew up in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUnder his portrait is his motto, a line from the Bible. \u003cem\u003eI will go in the strength of the Lord God.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThen two poems written about him. The Latin one tells him to keep teaching, undaunted by Satan and a raging world. The German one hopes he stays with his congregation for years to come as a faithful shepherd.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSit with what that took. A middle-aged guy, seventeen years into his job, and the people around him hired a painter, hired an engraver for months of work, and got two writers to compose poetry about him. Four men labored on this one sheet of paper so that one preacher would know he mattered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNobody is doing this for you at your job.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has this same engraving. So does the state art collection in Munich. Both date it to 1680. Their copies are in better shape than mine. Mine got wet somewhere in the last three hundred years and has brown staining across the bottom to show for it, plus a crease and some old tape from whoever had it before me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eI can't tell you exactly what year this particular sheet was printed. The copper plate existed, and plates got stored in drawers and used again decades later. I'd rather tell you I don't know than make something up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat I can tell you is that this is the real thing and not a modern reproduction. You can feel the dent where the metal plate pressed into the paper, and under magnification the ink stands up off the surface where it came out of the carved lines. Printers don't leave those marks. A copy machine can't fake them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the face is still perfect. The collar, the hair, the books, the curtain behind him, all of it razor sharp. Hang it on a wall and you have a dead Frankfurt preacher staring straight at you, undaunted by Satan and a raging world, in the biggest collar you have ever seen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eImage is roughly 9 × 13 inches. Comes with the old backing sheet it was mounted to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIf you can read the pencil scribbles on the back, write to me. I would love to know who owned this before I did.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Rarelight Archives","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54267350090092,"sku":"EPH-00207","price":195.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1007\/3538\/5964\/files\/fdbe94dd-a54e-5889-a8af-7224b9564b8b.jpg?v=1788144373","url":"https:\/\/rarelightarchives.com\/products\/bartholomaus-kilian-copperplate-portrait-of-johann-conrad-sondershausen-1680-plate","provider":"Rarelight Archives","version":"1.0","type":"link"}