The Brilliant Line, featured on RISD's Museum of Art

Art Fag City came up with an interesting link this morning, a feature titled Analyze This, part of an exhibition at Rhode Island School of Design titled The Brilliant Line. If you're an art history nerd, this website is a light pleasure, something akin to a snack (I imagine the exhibition is a little more in depth). If you're a print nerd, this is sheer delight, although it doesn't compare to standing in front of the actual print, your gloved hands holding a magnifying glass which you try not to drop on the ancient print out of excitement. Alright well, now you know something about my experiences in museums. Guards are suspicious of me from the minute I walk in - people are rarely as excited about these old things as I clearly am. (I squeal, I really do. I don't know the meaning of composure!) Given we don't have the prints right in front of us, this is the next best most accessible thing. Which is of course, what I love about it.

Here you are treated to several different levels of analysis. First, there's a small blurb on the artist and the work next to a selected print. At that point, you can mouse over the print as you would a magnifying glass. In this way you're allowed to inspect the lines and crosshatching in a fair amount of detail, but then! Click the small square on the upper right which beckons you to "analyze lines" and you're directed to a page where you can layer the crosshatching at four different levels to reveal the engraver's technique, adding value, shade, and contour to the image. Each artist has similar but varying technique, and it's fun to scroll through them all and investigate.

The site also features a video of Andrew Raftery re-creating the old-school engraving technique, complete with wax and burin.

Oh holy nerd heaven! It's a shame I have to work today, I really want to go print something instead.

Anyway my favoured master printer Hendrick Goltzius is markedly absent from this small collection of samples but he is mentioned in Jan Harmensz. Muller's profile, which makes sense seeing as how Muller was not only a supposed apprentice to Goltzius but he was almost equally as dramatic and shall we say, quirky, in his representations.

As with all things that make art accessible to everyone, I'm a fan.

Phaeton, from the series The Four Disgracers, 1588
Engraved by Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558–1617) after Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (Dutch, 1562–1638)
Engravings; first state of three; Diam. about 13 in. (33.1 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York