Like Instagram today, printmaking caused a revolutionary increase in the number of images in the early modern period. And as today, new image-making technology was appreciated but also debated, as well as the cause of legal conflict. This resulted in a new status of printmaking: of the people involved, the process, and the products (prints). In the same era, c. 1550-1800, the old and inclusive ideal of the ‘arts’ was replaced with new ideas about first the ‘liberal arts’ and later the ‘fine arts’. In these new schemes, art became separated from technology (and the crafts). Yet the separation of art and technology is not obvious; it was developed in Western Europe in the early modern period. This separation, in turn, was at the core of the Industrial Revolution. Printmaking in the Low Countries is the perfect case study to investigate this important watershed, as it is a hybrid between art and technology and the Low Countries were a centre of printmaking. Uniquely, this project investigates printmaking in two novel ways: 1) from the angle of debate and appreciation; 2) through legal conflicts and the development of intellectual property (copyright and patents). This project will thus result in a new history of printmaking and in a reassessment of the art-technology divide. This is crucial to understand today’s digital economy with new disruptive image-making technology.