Engraving

Engraving is a technique of high-precision intaglio printmaking in which the image is cut directly into a metal, usually copper, plate with a burin, a steel tool with a V-shaped profile. The artist physically removes metal, ploughing clean, crisp furrows that are then filled with ink; the surplus is wiped from the surface, and under the pressure of the press the ink is transferred from the grooves onto dampened paper. The technique demands great skill and strength, since every line is cut by hand and corrections are almost impossible. Engraving developed in Europe in the fifteenth century and reached its heights in the work of Albrecht Durer, whose sheets astonish with the tonal richness achieved through the density of hatching alone. For centuries reproductive engraving was the chief means of multiplying and disseminating images before the advent of photomechanical printing. In Ukraine copperplate engraving flourished in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the workshops of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, becoming an important part of Baroque book culture.