T_416
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.11.03, day 310
- 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 (combined score of 5.0 or more)
The combined score
- Combined score
- 6.31
- Read half
- 27.5
- Measured half
- 35.6
Read · V23 (v23.13)
- V23 rating
- 5.5
- Form
- 2
- Tonal depth
- 1.8
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.2
- Material and surface
- 1.6
- Ink cover
- 85%
- Dark share
- 79%
- Tonal steps
- 3
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 14, water stain 7, dead ink 1, bloom 1
Measured · V24, from the 16-bit TIFF
- Mass
- 10 of 10
- Tone
- 6.8 of 14
- Void
- 4.8 of 8
- Flow
- 6 of 10
- Balance
- 8 of 8
- Measured half
- 35.6 of 50
- Mass width in mm
- rung 5 of 5
- Mass width against the sheet
- rung 5 of 5
- Evenness of that width
- rung 5 of 5
- Depth of the darks
- rung 4 of 5
- Black plateau
- rung 2 of 5
- Step from mid to dark
- rung 0 of 5
- Evenness inside the darks
- rung 3 of 5
- Spread across tonal bands
- rung 1 of 5
- Voids gathered, not scattered
- rung 3 of 5
- Directions across the sheet
- rung 3 of 5
- Local gesture and edge
- rung 3 of 5
- Balance on the sheet
- rung 5 of 5
- Mass width
- 199 mm
- Depth of the darks (p75 density)
- 1.80
- Largest void, radius
- 87 mm
- Direction alignment
- 0.22
- Left and right asymmetry
- 0.33
- Resolution
- 4.02 px per mm
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.13, on 2026.11.03: 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: 0.054 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 2 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
“A broken ring of heavy arcs around a pale channel: clear structure and movement, but darks swallow most layering and tonal range, and creases mar the lower-left mass. Ordinary overall, with a surface weakness.”
Two quarter-ring masses and outer arc bands are coherent, with holding walls and curved travel; inner quadrants read as heavy filled slabs, and band ends are blunt.
WEAKEST Huge right quadrant fill, bulky and slab-like inside its arc
STRONGEST Outer arc bands following the sweep of the brush
Left mass steps between two dark wedges, outer bands show grey overlaps; right quadrant reads almost flat black in colour. Modulation 0.054 barely clears flat; darks dominate, few mid-greys.
WEAKEST Right quadrant interior, near uniform black in colour view
STRONGEST Stepped greys of left wedge and outer arc overlaps
Band overlaps at the top and right edges and grey under-arcs stay readable; inside the main quadrants, later black passes largely cover the earlier ones, so sequence is only partly legible.
WEAKEST Inner dark quadrants swallow earlier passes beneath them
STRONGEST Translucent overlaps at top-left and upper-right band ends
Two arcs swing around a shaped vertical channel and pale lower circle, giving clear movement; dark weight fills most of the sheet, leaving lower masses heavy and static.
WEAKEST Dark quadrants crowd the frame; small central blocks feel incidental
STRONGEST Broken ring with pale central channel opening into lower circle
Sharp crease lines cross the left dark mass and upper-left band, visible in colour and stronger when stretched; pale specks mid-left, milky smudge on right mass's inner edge.
WEAKEST Crease lines and crumpling inside lower-left dark mass
STRONGEST Dry-brush streaks at upper right and lower centre
5 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 5 distinct places, 23 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.
3 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
2 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.6A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 5.5.
Engine v23.13, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on a stratified sample of 24 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.