T_396
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
- 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
- 6
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1.8
- Layering
- 2.4
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 93%
- Dark share
- 70%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 6, dead ink 1, overwork 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.
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: 0.048 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 3 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 layered sheet resembles R3's method. But heavy coverage, flat central and right darks, and a crowded right half keep it ordinary, apart from layering that reads clearly around the rim.”
Radial arc strokes hold their walls and follow brush travel; the right-hand rectangular dark slab and the fused central dark field read as bulky fills.
WEAKEST bulky dark slab block at right
STRONGEST arc bands ringing the small central eye
Peripheral bands step through greys; the big central dark and right slab are near-uniform inside, with modulation barely above the flat threshold.
WEAKEST flat black slab at right
STRONGEST stepped grey bands at upper-left periphery
Many translucent radial passes overlap legibly around the rim and top right; toward the centre the darkest passes bury earlier ones.
WEAKEST central dark field where passes merge
STRONGEST translucent overlapping arcs at top and left edges
Spiral pulls the eye to the white centre and the diagonal bar adds thrust, but ink covers 93% of the sheet; the right side feels jammed.
WEAKEST crowded right half, little empty paper
STRONGEST white eye and wedge drawing focus to centre
Ink controlled with dry-brush edges at rim; no major stains seen; small pale nick at bottom right edge and minor scuffs at bottom centre.
WEAKEST dense black right slab, dull surface
STRONGEST dry-brush streaked edges of peripheral 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, 10 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.
3 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.8A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 6.0.
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.