The metal plates he commonly used were of thin, 

 cold-hammered copper, as shown by extant 

 examples.'^ The hammering had the effect of making 

 the metal harder than today's rolled copper sheets. 

 This enabled more prints to be taken from the plate 

 than is possible for a present-day printmaker. To- 

 day, we tend to consider drypoint a very fugitive 

 medium, because the burr perishes so quickly under 

 the pressure of the printing press. Rembrandt un- 

 doubtedly had fewer inhibitions about drypoint, for 

 he could expect his harder copper to hold up longer, 

 perhaps for as many as fifty excellent prints from the 

 same plate. Hammered copper, unlike the modern 

 rolled variety, is also completely free of grain in the 

 metal. This enables a drypoint needle to move freely 

 in any direction without encountering the resistance of 

 a grain. Here again, Rembrandt had more incentive 

 to use drypoint than a modern artist. 



Rembrandt's etching ground has been the subject 

 of considerable discussion. A book published in 1660, 

 nine years before the artist's death, contains a recipe 

 for "The Ground of Rinebrant of Rine."'" This 

 ground, similar to that described by Bosse as a "soft" 

 ground,'* consists of two parts wax, one part mastic, 

 and one part asphaltum. There are countless for- 

 mulae for such grounds, but virtually all are per- 

 mutations of the same three ingredients, with only 

 slight differences in the proportions." The ground 

 given as Rembrandt's is a thoroughly conventional 

 one. 



A knotty problem, however, is introduced by the 

 last line of this 1660 description: ". . . lay your 

 black ground very thin, and the white ground upon 

 it. This is the only way of Rinebrant . . . ."^^ No 

 elaboration is given. This one line presents a number 

 of problems, not all of which are soluble. To take 

 it at face value is to accept the contemporary evidence 

 that Rembrandt not only used a white ground but 

 used it exclusively. This assertion cannot be taken 

 uncritically. 



It will readily be seen that a white ground might 

 be of considerable assistance to an artist. His needle 

 penetrates the white to the copper, giving the familiar 

 effect of a reddish ink line on white paper. A normal 

 ground, without treatment, is virtually transparent, 

 making the etcher's lines rather difficult to see.^' The 

 most usual procedure, both in the 17th century and 

 today, is to smoke the ground and incorporate the 

 soot with the ground by heating the plate slightly. 

 This gives a black ground, against which the lines 



appear light, the negative of the ultimate print. The 

 black ground is favored, both out of long-established 

 tradition and because it is very easy to apply. Fur- 

 thermore, artists today explain that they also enjoy 

 the feeling of working slightly blind, that one of 

 their greatest rewards is the sense of surprise in peeling 

 the first proof print off the plate. For whatever 

 reason, the black ground has been preferred by the 

 great majority of artists, both past and present. 



The description of Rembrandt's ground in 1660 

 takes knowledge of the white ground for granted. 

 Its technique certainly appears to have been generally 

 well known among artists in the middle of the 1 7th 

 century. Rubens, in a letter as early as 1622, men- 

 tions having received a recipe for a white ground, 

 although he could not remember it." The first 

 technical explanation of the process appeared in 

 Bosse's pioneer treatise in 1645.-' There is no reason 

 why Rembrandt should not have known of the white- 

 ground technique and every reason to suppose that 

 he did. 



There is one piece of strong evidence that he did 

 use a white ground about 1631. One of Rembrandt's 

 drawings exists which, unlike most of his sketches 

 is an exact prototype (in reverse) of a specific etching, 

 Diana at the Bath}^ The back of this drawing is 

 covered with black chalk, and its lines show the 

 indentation of tracing. The only reasonable explana- 

 tion of this evidence is that Rembrandt placed his 

 prepared drawing on top of a white-grounded plate 

 and traced the lines, depositing the black chalk lines 

 on the ground, where he could then trace them with 

 his etching needle. Another similarly indented draw- 

 ing — for the portrait of Cornells Claesz Anslo — has 

 been held to show the same procedure as late as 1641. 

 This drawing, however, is backed, not with black 

 chalk as previously cited, but with ocher tempera. ^^ 

 Although surely used for tracing, this gives perhaps 

 even more evidence of his use of a black ground rather 

 than white, although ocher lines would show on either. 

 These conclusions are not meant to imply in any way 

 that Rembrandt used the tracing of a drawing for 

 his Landscape with a hay barn .... There is every 

 probability that he did not do so. The implication 

 is rather that only where a traced drawing with 

 black backing exists do we have circumstantial evi- 

 dence for the use, and possibly a more general use, 

 of white ground. Without the published recipe no 

 question would be likely to arise that Rembrandt 

 used anything but the standard black ground. With 

 it, we must search for corroboration. 



100 



BULLETIN 250 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



