Engraving is a way of making prints in which the artist cuts every line by hand into a metal plate. The tool is a burin, a steel rod with a sharp, diamond shaped tip that removes a thin strip of metal as it is pushed forward. The grooves it leaves are filled with ink, the surface of the plate is wiped clean, and a damp sheet of paper pressed onto the plate pulls the ink out of the lines.
The name says what the work is. Engrave comes from grave, an old English verb that meant to dig or to carve, and an engraver does exactly that: he does not draw on the plate, he digs into it, one line at a time.
One of the best known engravings is Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I, dated 1514. It shows a winged figure sitting with her head in her hand among scattered tools and instruments. Every shadow in the print, on her dress, on the stone block beside her and in the sky, is made of fine lines cut into the plate.
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The tool behind that print did not come from a painter's studio. The burin belonged to goldsmiths, who used it to decorate silver and gold, and engraving grew out of their workshops. The two artists who first made it a major art, Martin Schongauer and Dürer himself, were both sons of goldsmiths.
Their success raised a problem that painters had never had to face. A print could be copied line for line by another engraver and sold as the original. In Venice, someone copied Dürer's work so closely that buyers took the copies for his, down to his own monogram. Dürer took the matter to the authorities, and what they decided is still told in two different ways.
What You'll Discover
Why goldsmiths' sons made the first great engravings.
The signature Dürer hung on a tree.
How a burin turns pressure into shadow.
What Venice decided about the copied monogram.
How Raphael's drawings traveled without his hand.