T_403
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.10.26, day 302
- 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
- 7.2
- Form
- 2.6
- Tonal depth
- 2
- Layering
- 3
- Composition
- 2
- Material and surface
- 2
- Ink cover
- 86%
- Dark share
- 58%
- Tonal steps
- 4
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 15
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.
4 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: 0.042 (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
“Twin radial fans of layered translucent bands, close in idiom to R3 but more crowded, with flatter dark cores and blockier slabs; layering is the strength, minor splatter and an edge crease.”
Radial blocks and arcs are coherent, walls hold; upper-left and right fans read as stacked slabs rather than strokes following brush travel; inner arcs are fluent.
WEAKEST Bulky rectangular slabs crowding upper-left fan
STRONGEST Thin concentric arcs hugging the two white circles
Wide range of stacked greys at the fan edges, but dark modulation 0.042 measures flat; main black blocks left and right centre are largely uniform inside.
WEAKEST Flat black interior of large upper-left block
STRONGEST Stepped translucent greys in right fan's outer rings
Many translucent radial passes overlap in readable order, building depth outward from both circles; some dark centres absorb earlier passes.
WEAKEST Dense dark core where passes merge, right fan
STRONGEST Overlapping translucent radial bands, outer left fan
Two radial centres give strong movement and the white circles are shaped, but 86% coverage crowds the sheet; empty paper is mostly a top strip.
WEAKEST Crowded lower band with little paper left
STRONGEST Twin white circles anchoring radiating fans
Ink controlled, edges crisp; small splatter in right circle, stray dot bottom right, and a crack/crease at top-right edge, all minor and off main masses.
WEAKEST Ink splash inside right white circle
STRONGEST Dry-brush fraying at upper fan 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.
4 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
none namedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 2.0A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 7.2.
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.