FIGURE 14
Detail of the etched copper plate for Rembrandt's print, Christ seated disputing with the doctors. After Coppier, p. 117.
(Smithsonian photo 59395.)
FIGURE 15
Detail of Rembrandt's finished print, Landscape with a hay barn and a flock of sheep, far right, showing drypoint drawing of sheep and post. Enlarged 10 times. (Smithsonian photo 59388.)
Rembrandt's use of drypoint is, as Jakob Rosenberg says, "the most important innovation in Rembrandt's mature graphic work."[33] After etching his skeletal design on the plate, he went to work with his drypoint needles—long, stiff, iron instruments—sharpened to a fine point. An artist generally has several available, so that he does not have to stop and re-sharpen in the course of his work. Rembrandt evidently went even further and deliberately used dull needles to obtain certain light line effects.
When the finished print is compared with the sketch of the etched lines alone, it can be seen how vital the drypoint is to Rembrandt's whole conception. The needle held vertically and slightly dulled, for instance, produced the light shadings on the central hillock at lower left. The sharp needle, held at an angle, threw up the burr which printed as the rich blacks on both sides of the hay barn, along the bank of the stream, and on the road at left center. The sheep and post at the far right were completely drawn
with drypoint, as was the shepherd of the flock at left center (figure 16). It is interesting to note that the flock originally had two shepherds, evidently a man and a woman, standing at the center of the road and behind the flock.[34] These figures were drawn in the ground and etched in the first stage of the print. Rembrandt then must have decided that their proportion was wrong for his composition. He reworked the area, using a scraper or burnisher to flatten out his etched lines, and covered the remaining ghosts of the figures with a mesh of drypoint cross-hatching. He then added the single small figure of the shepherd boy entirely in drypoint.