T_398
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.10.25, day 301
- 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 (v23.11)
- V23 rating
- 5.8
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1.2
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 1.8
- Ink cover
- 83%
- Dark share
- 54%
- Tonal steps
- 6
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 12, water stain 3
Peter's own rating
- Rating
- 6.5
“There is always something that can be done better.”Peter Yuill · 2026.07.02
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.11, on 2026.10.26: 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.
6 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: 0.038 (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 sheet works in the same radial, layered arc style as R3. The passes are well ordered and legible, but the dark masses are flat inside and the heavy lower-right slab crowds the composition. The material is sound apart from minor marks.”
Fan and arc segments hold clean walls following a radial swing; the large lower-right block is a heavy filled slab with stiff, stacked rectangular edges.
WEAKEST Bulky dark rectangular slab filling bottom right
STRONGEST Curved arc bands around the fan's hub
Dark interior modulation 0.038 measures flat; fan and right block are uniform inside, with tone changing mainly at overlapping pass edges. Grey arcs give some range.
WEAKEST Flat black interior of the large upper fan
STRONGEST Translucent grey arc bands at left
Many translucent passes overlap in a readable order across arcs and right-hand rectangles; overlaps stay legible and build depth, though the darkest areas close up.
WEAKEST Right block passes merge toward dark uniformity
STRONGEST Stacked translucent arcs fanning at upper left
Strong radial rotation around the central hub, with shaped empty paper lower left; the right half is weighted and crowded, so the balance tips heavily.
WEAKEST Crowded heavy mass in bottom right
STRONGEST Radial swing around the hub at centre
The ink is controlled with crisp pass edges. There is a stray thin line in the top-right paper, faint crease marks in the right block and a cloudy pale wash below the hub.
WEAKEST Crease-like marks across the right dark block
STRONGEST Clean translucent edges of grey arc passes
6 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 6 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. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
6 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 1.2A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.8.
Engine v23.11, 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.