T_200
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.04.08, day 101
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S11, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, raw
- Inks
- MB1, MB2, MB3
- Phase
- P1 Warm-up
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.6
- Ink cover
- 53%
- Dark share
- 15%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 10, bloom 3, other 1, tide line 2
Older engine
- V7
- 4
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 5 times by Claude Opus 5.5 against three reference paintings (R1 to R3), each read independent of the others. How the engine works.
Three views of one sheet.
Left, the photograph. Centre, the tone stretch the model is shown beside it: the darkest 45% of tones spread over the whole range, so flat black, banding and stains show. Right, every pixel as the measuring code classes it: cyan black ink, deep teal translucent grey, stone the palest ink, near black bare paper.
3 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Life inside the black: 0.054 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 4 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“This is an energetic circular sweep with three dark anchors and is ordinary overall. The arc is fluent, but the bottom black is bulky and flat. Watery blots and puddles around the masses lower the surface; the sheet is close to R2.”
The large grey circular sweep follows the brush's travel. The bottom-centre black lozenge and the right black mass are bulky. The left dark wedge holds its shape.
WEAKEST Bottom dark slug is a bulky, blunt lozenge
STRONGEST Grey sweeping arc with dry-brush striations
The tone-stretched view shows a lighter core and arcs inside the right mass, and banding in the left wedge. The bottom lozenge is mostly uniform. Modulation is 0.054 with three tonal steps.
WEAKEST Bottom black lozenge is nearly flat inside
STRONGEST Right dark mass with a pale core and arcs
There is a translucent grey sweep pass, then black accents and spatter. Overlaps at the left and bottom-right stay readable, but the sequence stays simple.
WEAKEST Black passes sit on the grey but do not build depth
STRONGEST Grey arc overlapping the left textured dark passage
A ring movement carries the eye around three dark anchors, and the centre of the paper is shaped by the arc. The left side is cluttered and the floating grey dabs in the centre are weak.
WEAKEST Upper-left cluster is busy and crowded
STRONGEST Circular sweep linking three dark anchors
Watery grey blots run down the far left, and pale puddle drops sit at the lower right beside the arc. A cloudy wash sits in the upper-left mass, visible in the colour view.
WEAKEST Pale drip blots and watery puddles beside the masses
STRONGEST Dry-brush striations in the grey arc
5 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 5 distinct places, 16 mentions in all across 5 reads; the number in each ninth is how many times a flaw was named there. Reads agreeing on a place strengthen the evidence for one flaw; they do not multiply it. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 4 principal ink masses traced (cyan), 5 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 16 edge segments, 56% crisp, 38% soft or bloomed, 6% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
3 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
1 major flaw: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.6A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.5.
Engine v23.8, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on 24 randomly chosen paintings so the median sheet scores 5. The scale is relative to this archive, not to painting in general, and a difference of less than half a point between two paintings is noise.