T_388
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
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S14, Half-Cooked Red Star Mo She 6-Foot Bark Xuan Paper, self-sized
- 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
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 84%
- Dark share
- 75%
- Tonal steps
- 1
- Flaws named by the reads
- dead ink 5, other 10
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.
1 family 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: 0.040 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, one answer.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A stepped-arc spiral in the R3 manner, but a vast flat black core swallows the layering and tonal life. The arc edges and the spiral eye work; the overall sheet is ordinary to below average.”
Stepped arcs at the upper rim and left edge follow the brush's travel. The large central-right black mass is filled in and has lost its stroke shape.
WEAKEST Central dark mass reads as a bulky filled slab
STRONGEST Stepped arc strokes around the spiral's left rim
Interior modulation is 0.040, which counts as flat, and there is one tonal step. Greys appear only at the outer edges of the arcs. The core mass is a uniform black.
WEAKEST Huge central-right black mass, flat inside
STRONGEST Translucent grey steps along the top-right rim
Several passes overlap legibly in the stepped rim at the top right and in the lower-left arcs. In the centre, the later black covers the earlier passes.
WEAKEST Central mass buries the earlier passes
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent bands at the top-right rim
The spiral gives a clear rotational movement and the white lower left is shaped. At 84% ink coverage, the right half is jammed with dead black.
WEAKEST Dark mass crowds the right and bottom
STRONGEST Spiral eye leading into the white lower-left void
There are small drips and spatters at the upper and lower left, away from the masses. Paper creasing shows in the tone-stretched view. No tide lines or rings inside the dark.
WEAKEST Dead, uniform black in the centre
STRONGEST Dry-brush edges on the stepped arcs
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.
1 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 5.0.
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.