ETCHING

Rembrandt’s choice to use drypoint and burin for the five states The Three Crosses (c. 1653) plate indicates a particular interest in control over the clarity, resilience, and relative depth of the lines of the plate. Marking a plate with drypoint or with a burin requires far more pressure from the artist’s hand than does scratching the ground that will be exposed in an acid bath. While burin marks last well through multiple prints, drypoint lines fade astonishingly quickly, such that each print of drypoint work is noticeably different from the preceding print. The ephemerality of drypoint lines makes them an ideal choice for sketching in the rough design onto a plate for which details may be more permanently etched in acid—a technique Rembrandt had used on past plates (fig. 5). The strain that drypoint puts on the artist’s hand is a notable “resistance” I discovered through reconstruction of etching techniques, which Pamela Smith argues is integral for understanding the unique challenges of a maker (22). Though I was aware of the differences in line quality that drypoint and acid etching produce, I may not have realized how important Rembrandt considered the effects of drypoint for this plate had I not experienced the resistance of the plate to this particular technique myself.

There are three apparent reasons why Rembrandt may have chosen this more physically straining method of mark making over etching with acid. The first is that he was interested in the blur of drypoint lines that results from the displaced burs catching ink on the side of the indentation in the plate. The haziness of the lines in The Three Crosses deepens shadows and lends the atmospheric quality of an apparition to the work, one that enhances the scene’s “penumbral gloom” (Parshall 25). The second reason Rembrandt may have chosen drypoint is that drypoint lines degrade over time as a plate is printed and the burs are worn down, resulting in the lightening of the image with each print. The third reason is that drypoint allows for real-time control over the depth each line, similar to how one controls the weight of the line in a drawing as one makes it, as opposed to the depth being endowed retroactively by acid. The first two properties of drypoint speak to the content of the work as one of revelation, while the third positions the artist’s hand more firmly as the revealer, as opposed to letting acid be the operator on the topography of the plate. This essay expounds upon the ways that these properties of drypoint further the program of The Three Crosses as one of revelation of not only the religious subject but also of the artist’s hand as the primary agent of creation up until the plate goes through the press.

The evolution of the images that the fragile surface of The Three Crosses produces enacts the process of revelation visually through sequence. Each time an image made with drypoint is printed, it lightens as the burs are flattened and the fragile grooves of lines collapse. This may lead one to believe that with each print, the image loses information. However, in the case of The Three Crosses plate, the lines are so densely hatched in some areas, such as in the figures to the right of Christ, that this lightening of line is also a process of illumination that elucidates rather than obscures forms (figs. 1, 2). Thus, with each print, the darkest parts of the image reveal themselves to the viewer more clearly even as the plate that created them degrades. Each print exemplifies the tension between clarification and disappearance so that the viewer who sees multiple prints is acutely aware of the elusiveness of the ‘ideal’ image. This elusiveness may reference the difficulty of true comprehension of the divine through image in accordance with the long standing skepticism as to the artist’s ability to communicate the true divinity of a religious subject through an image made by human hands alone. In creating images set within a continuum of degradation and elucidation, Rembrandt addresses this question of the adequacy of a stand-alone religious image to faithfully portray its divine subject. The viewer’s relationship to the sequence of prints mirrors the ongoing spiritual struggle toward divine comprehension. One becomes aware of the volatility of the prints that fit more into Tim Ingold’s category of “things”, which converse with each other, the plate that made them, theological questions on the role of images, rather than being static “objects” (136). When seen like this, the evolution of an image made in drypoint, not just the reworking of the plate, supports Parshall’s argument that Rembrandt redefines what it means for a work to be “finished”. Though the plate may never again be altered, the print is never finished. It’s location within a series in which the plate is reborn into five distinct states and in which each print clears the plate of information asks the viewer to imagine the plate printing forever, Christ becoming lighter and lighter with each press, and finally lifting, perhaps even rising, off the surface of the plate and the paper. If Rembrandt captured merely an image of the divine in any single print, the compilation of the prints captures the nature of the divine: infinite, illuminating, and ultimately beyond the comprehension of corporeal vision.