Albrecht Dürer, printmaker

Viewers today continue to marvel at Albrecht Dürer's unsurpassed printmaking skills. It is difficult to control an engraved line, as it is created by gouging into a metal plate with a v-shaped tool, called a burin, which must be pushed through and across the surface. Once the plate is inked and wiped, it is printed under great pressure, forcing the ink from the engraved lines of the plate onto the paper. The engraved line is typically sharp and crisp.

In this image, Dürer fills the sheet with fine, tightly-spaced lines consistent in their width and strength. The surface seems woven together in patterns of undulating parallel and cross-hatched, broken and unbroken marks. From a distance the lines read as tone; close up one can see how they curve to give volume to the figures and trees, how they describe surfaces, and how ornamental they are in and of themselves.