T_387
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.10.16, day 292
- Size
- 110 × 97 cm
- Paper
- S13, Tianxuan Ge Dot Ink Becomes Gold, semi-cooked (self-sized), aged
- Inks
- MB6, MB8, MB9, MB10
- Phase
- P4 S14
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 5.2
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2.2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 83%
- Dark share
- 65%
- Tonal steps
- 2
- Flaws named by the reads
- water stain 5, other 7, dead ink 3
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.16: 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.
2 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Two or fewer: Tonal depth is held at the bottom rung whatever the model reads. A dense sheet of many translucent passes can count low here, so Layering is left to the reads. Life inside the black: 0.036 (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 radial fan is related to R3 and has good translucent layering, but the dark masses are flat inside, the sheet is crowded and the lower-right bands are blocky. Overall it is ordinary to slightly above, near R2.”
The fan blades follow the brush's arc and end in sharp spikes. The stacked horizontal bands at lower right are slab-like and filled in.
WEAKEST Blocky horizontal slabs, lower right
STRONGEST Radial blades tapering to spikes, upper left
Measured modulation inside the darks is 0.036 (flat), with only 2 tonal steps. The large left and centre blacks are uniform; tone changes only at the overlap edges.
WEAKEST Flat black interior of left fan mass
STRONGEST Grainy translucent greys at the outer rim
Many translucent radial passes overlap in a readable order and build toward the centre. The outer edges show each pass, but the core blacks fuse together.
WEAKEST Central darks where passes merge to black
STRONGEST Translucent stacked blades around the outer rim
The fan rotates around a small white hook, and the white wedge at the bottom is shaped. At 83% coverage the sheet is crowded, and the lower-right block is heavy.
WEAKEST Crowded, heavy lower-right block
STRONGEST White hook and wedge opening at centre bottom
The ink is controlled and the edges are crisp. A beige stain at the top-left corner, small drops at the bottom and creases all sit away from the principal masses.
WEAKEST Tinted stained paper in top-left corner
STRONGEST Dry-brush grain at the blade edges
4 distinct places, 0 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 4 distinct places, 15 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.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
2 steps: appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.2.
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.